Hack the Heart
by Silverspegel
Summary: Waking up after having his mind trapped in a computer, prodigy hacker Roxas' memories are a mess. Who is Sora, and how is he connected to Roxas? Who has done this? All clues lead to a wish to hack the ultimate source of information: The Kingdom Heart...
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

"What are you... **_NO!_**"

He grabbed the cable connecting his best friend's mind to his body, and yanked it loose.

"Do you realize what you've done? You _killed_ him!"

The accusation was thrown at him from the other side of the chair where the body of his friend suddenly turned lifeless.

"No. **You** did. He was dead the very moment he went in to save me."

The older man stared at him in frustrated anger, shaking with the emotion as he tried to decide what to do. His entire planning, all the years of research and training he'd spent on this ungrateful and treacherous young man, it all made him feel ready to explode.

A single tear was tracing its way down the younger man's cheek as he bent down over his friend's dead body in the chair and gently put his lips on his forehead.

"I'm sorry," he whispered softly, voice shaking. "I never meant for this to happen... and I can't do this. Forgive me."

In a single movement he then straightened himself out and grabbed a hold of one of the other cables attached to the chair.

"You ungrateful son of a-" the older man called out as he realised what his opponent was doing, reached out to stop him, but was too late.

The cable was ripped off at the base, the electrical wires inside it facing the air with sparks in a hot blue color.

"Forgive me..." he said silently.

With his tear filled eyes locked on his friend's unmoving face, the young man quickly moved the hand holding the dangerous object and put it to his chest.

The last word he uttered before his consciousness gave in to the darkness; was a name.

" ..._Sora_..."


	2. 1 Night time experiences

**Chapter one: Night time experiences**

Sora looked up at the starry sky above and exhaled heavily in a sigh of exhaustion.

This was getting nowhere.

He'd been running for hours without destination in a futile attempt to clear his head from the ever persistent dreams that had kept haunting him for some period of time now.

Sora couldn't quite pinpoint the first time he'd woke up screaming, all covered in sweat and with his sheets wrapped tightly around his limbs, as if he'd unconsciously been trying to snare himself while sleeping.

He just knew that he hadn't had one single night without a return of the dream ever since.

It wasn't the same dream every time; it altered from one night to the other, but some things remained the same in every dream, making him recognize it as it came over him.

In the dream he saw people he for the sake of his life couldn't remember ever having met with, but when seeing their faces he got the feeling he knew them all very well.

Another thing that kept repeating itself in the dreams were the feeling of being watched and a sense of growing fear of the darkness, resulting in pure panic as the shadows in the corners of every new dream's scenery grew until they ultimately enclosed him like a dark cage that kept on shrinking.

That's when he usually woke up.

This night had been no different in that sense and he'd woken up screaming his throat sore.

It was lucky, he'd thought grimly once he'd calmed down enough to get back to reality, that he'd been living on his own the entire time.

The mere thought of what his mother would make of the screaming made him wince.

A mild breeze swept gently through the soft grass and invited it to dance under the moon, tickling Sora's bare arms where he was lying.

With a slight shiver he sat up, but kept his eyes on the stars above.

This night he'd woke much earlier than usual and his first thought had been to get outside for some fresh air. So he'd put on a pair of sweat pants, a t-shirt, socks and his running shoes and gone ahead with his plan.

Usually his mind would clear up while running and afterwards he usually felt refreshed and trouble free, but not this time.

No matter how much he tried to think of nothing but the steady movement of his feet, parts of the dream kept breaking through his concentration and the images of a blond, blue-eyed guy kept flashing before his eyes in different ages and sceneries.

Sora shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the soft whispering of the leaves in a nearby tree as the wind went on to make them join in the midnight waltz it had already started with the grass.

Who was this guy?

In his dream, Sora had sometimes walked beside him, other times he'd _been_ him, talking calmly and laughing together with someone else that he didn't know.

It was as if they were friends, close friends even. But for his life he couldn't remember his name.

His face, sunkissed and somewhat childish, even in the scenes where he'd been at Sora's present age, seemed just as familiar as his own reflection. If he hadn't known better, Sora could have sworn he'd been looking at a lighter blond version of himself.

But the blond twin wasn't the only face he kept seeing in these haunting dreams.

There was an older guy there as well, with brilliant green eyes and hair so red it looked as if on fire.

Somehow this man always seemed to be around the blond one, in the background or right next to him. And for some reason the look in his eyes made Sora feel as if his heart was being squeezed dry.

It was a painful feeling, and yet something he didn't want to be without once it left him.

Sora knew this feeling well enough to be more than puzzled over it as it came over him at the sight of the redhead.

It annoyed him something fierce, especially since he could swear on the fact that he hadn't seen this man before in his entire life.

Somehow he guessed the feeling wasn't really his, but belonged to someone else; the redhead himself, or perhaps, the blond he followed.

Sora opened his eyes again and took a deep breath.

The night air's chill was finally starting to make itself noticed to him as it caressed his sweaty warm skin and he decided to get back up on his feet and return home to the apartment before he got himself a cold.

While slowly walking over the gravel on the city park walk, Sora kept pondering over his dream, having given up his tries to shove it away.

He'd seen the faces of people he truly knew as well, only they'd looked somewhat different from how he remembered them, as if being a sharpened copy of what they really were, all expressions and colours enhanced, or marked by experiences he hadn't known they'd had.

Kairi he'd recognized right away.

She was a girl he'd been friends with back when his family used to spend the summer vacations at a beach house near a small group of islands down by the south west coast. But he hadn't seen her since his last vacation there, before they sold the beach house and moved permanently to Desnei, a suburb of Traverse Town, as his dad had managed to get a more or less well-paid job at one of the city banks.

He'd been about 13 back then, and realizing he'd be parted from her Sora had almost packed a bag to run away from home, had it not been for Kairi telling him not to.

They could stay friends despite the distance, she'd said and they'd promised each other to write at least one letter a month to stay in touch, and visit during holidays.

Sora smiled to himself as he remembered his joy when receiving the first letter only one day after their arrival to the city. He'd written back the same day and he'd been smiling all the way home from the mail office.

But there hadn't been any more letters after that first one.

He'd kept hoping for it for almost an entire year, before he finally gave it up and forced himself to realise that the friendship was over. He'd been crying, but as the time went by, he'd let it go and hadn't thought about her ever since.

Until the dreams started.

Sora sighed.

The old pain was struggling to get back up to the surface at the thought of those long lost days on the island beach, but it wasn't as strong as it had once been and with another shake of his head, he'd subdued it.

A crow was heard from somewhere and a dog was barking.

The low humming of the first traffic of the waking morning made him turn his eyes towards the direction of the old clock tower some distance away as he exited the park and started walking up the street leading home.

4:30 AM.

How lovely. He'd been out in the park for almost three hours, during the "worst" time of the night, if you should believe the local papers screaming out warnings about murders and robbery and whatnot.

He snorted at the thought of anyone ever getting the urge to jump him when he so obviously begged for it by walking straight into the park unarmed and without any sort of valuables apart from the key to his apartment.

Bad guys don't jump the easy targets, simply because they're too easy to not be suspected of some kind of trick. At least that's what he thought and as far as he knew, it still hadn't happened anything to prove his theory wrong.

When these last thoughts rushed through his mind, Sora remembered another part of his dream this night, an episode near the end that involved another person he knew.

Silver hair surrounding a tan face with glittering mischievous turquoise eyes gave Riku a striking appearance that he was well aware of, but seldom used to his advantage.

He was about one year older than Sora, and cocky to a degree of being suicidal, but he also knew how to back it up with strong fists, whenever a witty remark of his hit the wrong nerve of someone in lack of the necessary sense of humour.

He was tall and fit, fast on his feet and just as agile as his slender body seemed to be, so as far as Sora knew, there hadn't been one fight from which Riku hadn't walked away being the victor.

When he'd first met him, it had been on his first day at the Traverse Town University and Sora had been in awe of his whole person; the attitude, the strength and his good looks.

The fact that their first meeting had been a case where Riku more or less saved him from a big bully when the brute had been about to remodel Sora's face for no apparent reason, other than Sora being small enough to boss around with, was another thing to add to the list of "all the things that makes Riku great".

After that, Riku had always been around to make sure Sora was doing ok, but they still hadn't become actual _friends_. All that there was, was a casual nod or a hello as they passed each other in the corridor or at the university grounds. Every now or then they even shared a lunch, but only if they happened to bump into each other during that time of day.

But in the dream, they were closer than that.

Much closer.

Sora shook his head violently as he had a sudden flashback of the dream.

Those kinds of thoughts and the feelings attached to them weren't exactly something he wished to awaken. Especially not when it came to Riku.

Another look at the clock tower told him he had about two hours left of his night before he had to get out of bed (again) and get to school.

Splendid.

Muttering curses to himself, Sora locked up the entrance door to the building where he lived and once inside, jogged up the stairs to the third floor, locked up his own door and got in.

Leaving the shoes on the door mat, he walked slowly towards his bed while undressing with stiff movements. He considered taking a shower, but decided it would be better if he just went to sleep as soon as possible. He could shower before he went off to school, if he still felt like it.

As his head hit the pillow, Sora came to think about the end of the dream again.

The shadows that had appeared to be alive, and the growing fear of being devoured by the darkness, had him somewhat confused.

It didn't fit with the rest of the dream, where all images were filled with light and warmth, or, in some cases, with a feeling of loss.

Whatever the dream was about, he had to figure out a way to get rid of it soon enough, because his lack of sleep was starting to show on his results in school, and since he was allowed to live in his present apartment at half-rent on the one condition that he was successful in school, Sora intended to do what he could to get his grades back up again before they got any worse.

He liked living on his own, without his mom constantly worrying over his recent lack of friends, or whatever was her subject of worry of the day, and his dad's constant comments on his grades in this or that subject.

The digital alarm clock on his windowsill announced the time with shocking red numbers.

5.00 AM.

The red colour reminded him of someone.

Fire in his skin, in his chest, in an apartment on a street bathing in sunlight...

Sora drifted off and was soundly asleep before he knew it.

One hour later he woke up screaming again, just in time for his alarm clock to set off.


	3. 2 The dawn of a new day

****_Author notes: I'm using lyrics of songs in this text. Those songs are not mine. One is "Simple and Clean" from the KH-soundtrack, the other is "Final destination" by Within Temptation. I just thought they'd bring a bit of feeling to the text. _

**Chapter two: The dawn of a new day**

A chorus of birds joined forces to wake up the world in general as Sora stepped out on the street to get over to the mono-rail. One would think a big city like Traverse Town would have a very small amount of nature within its wall of concrete buildings and asphalt roads, but truth was that the only thing missing was big hunt like deer, bear or wolves. The city park was full of life in between the trees and other greenery, and every here and there the observant pedestrian could discover a stray cat or an urban fox rummaging around among the trashcans in an alley.

Sora breathed in deeply and let out the air in a sigh. For quite some time now, he'd been feeling that there was something amiss with the world he lived in. He just _knew_ it. The problem was that for some reason he couldn't put his finger on what it was. His grades could be better, sure, but he enjoyed the studies at the university, so he couldn't really complain about that part of his life.

When it came to his home, it was, however untidy it could become every now and then, something very close to his own paradise, where he could do whatever he wanted whenever he felt like it. It sure did beat living with his parents. His parents were ok as well. His mom could get a bit testy about him not calling her often enough, but she loved him and he cared a lot about her too. Dad was the main reason he'd been able to move closer to the university once he got in, and having been the one supporting him to go on with his studies, the relationship between them was that of a fond friendship. The loan he still had to take, in order to manage his living in the big city without taking a part time job, was going to kick him hard in the butt in a few years from now, when he would have to start paying it back, but Sora didn't mind putting those thoughts on hold for the future.

All in all, there was just nothing unusual or over the top strange in his life at all, but he still couldn't shake the feeling that he was being tricked to believe a clever fake image of how he imagined a good life should be. It was as if he was somehow asleep, seeing what someone told him to see and thus missing the big picture: the ways and looks of the _real_ reality.

The dreams were probably a part of what had started to make him think about this; he had no doubt in this. Despite the strangeness of them, the dreams' world seemed so much more real to him. Colours, smells, tastes, sound – everything in them spoke to him in a way that his everyday life never did, and that bugged him big time.

Sora snorted at the direction his thoughts had taken and pushed them aside for a while and stepped onto the train that would take him across half the city. The cart he was in was just about empty, with only an older woman sitting in the far back, looking out her window in a trance-like state. Sora felt like screaming, just to make something happen that wasn't plain everyday business. But he kept quiet.

Instead he plugged his ears shut with the in-ear headphones for his MP3-player and searched among the songs saved on the unit, until he found his favourite. As he pressed play and the music started to fill him up with all the emotions connected to the song, Sora finally felt a bit more at peace. The song always made him feel a bit sad, though. He couldn't quite figure out why, but it simply moved him like no other songs did.

"_Hold me, whatever lies beyond this morning, _

_regardless of warnings the future doesn't scare me at all. _

_Nothing's like before..."_

When the train stopped at his station, Sora jumped off and set off in a jog across the street in order to get to the other sidewalk before the traffic lights shifted. The morning traffic was just beginning to get on the move as the sun slowly cascaded itself over the pavement and was reflected in golden rays of light from every window it hit on its way down to the ground. Light flowed over the street as the largest city in the country started to wake up to the new day.

Any other person might have been filled up with the light around him, feeling that the world had much beauty to offer as he watched the glitter created by the sun in a glass of water left out on the table of a first floor balcony. But Sora, oddly enough, felt nothing but sad. He blamed it momentarily on the song tuning out in his ears, but he knew it wasn't all that simple. The feeling went deeper than that, and it had been going on for a while now, he'd just been getting quite good at pushing it away.

Until now, that was.

As he turned off the street to take a shortcut through the Third District Park, a new song was started that for some reason had him stopping in his steps.

"_I escaped my final moment, _

_but it's turning back at me, _

_on every corner I can feel it, waiting..."_

Sora breathed heavily as a feeling of being watched had him turning around to make sure he was alone.

"_Just a moment, no awareness, _

_I coud easily slip away ..."_

Suddenly he felt as if the world was tilted a bit to the side.

"_And then I'll be gone, forever..." _

His stomach took a quick dive, while his heart rushed in his chest and the dizziness came over him before he knew it. Sora tried his best to stay upright, his arms out to the sides as if he was balancing on a loose wire and his entire body swaying on alarmingly unsteady legs. In his ears the dramatic lyrics kept forcing themselves into his mind like a drill that was intent on getting all the way through to the other side.

"_It's waiting, always trying. _

_I feel the hands of fate, _

_they're suffocating!"_

For a moment it felt as if time had been forcefully slowed down. Pain rushed through Sora's chest and he realized that he had been holding his breath for some time now. He forced himself to take a deep breath and exhale slowly, in the same time doing his best to block out the song still playing in his ears.

Time rushed back into movement and Sora took a moment to steady himself.

Once he was sure on the ground being intent on staying in place beneath his feet, Sora took a look around to see what could possibly have been the cause for this interruption of the time flow, not to mention his sudden instability. As expected, he saw nothing but the trees of the park and the other inhabitants of Traverse Town that rushed ahead down the sidewalk some steps away from where he was standing.

The song ended and was followed by a short moment of silence while the shuffle function kicked in to sort out another example from the massive list of music saved in his MP3 player.

Sora pressed down the stop button with the shadow of a grimace flying across his features for a brief second. He'd somehow lost his craving for music at the moment.

"Weird..." he muttered to himself as he put down his headphones into the same pocket where he kept the music device.

Sora took another uncertain look over his shoulder, shuddered, and started to walk once more towards the university. Behind him the leaves of the trees and bushes softly swayed back and forth, without a trace of a wind in the still morning air.

"_Damn it_!"

A tightly closed fist hit the table a few inches away from the keyboard.

"_I almost had him_!" the man hissed in painful acknowledgement of his failure.

"Calm down," his colleague said softly in a try to sooth the rising frustration. "It's not that bad, dude. At least now you know the code to look for... right?"

The red haired one inhaled and exhaled as if it was a painful act not to explode right then and there and took a moment to gather himself around what the blond had said.

"You're right, Demyx, you're right. I know the code and I have a good hunch of where to look. It won't take as long as before to find him again. I'm just..." He interrupted himself in order to take another calming breath, before he continued. "I'm just so frustrated by it all. I mean, _two fucking years_..."

The man called Demyx dared a friendly pat on the other man's shoulder and gave him a look of true empathy for his feelings in the matter.

"I know, Axel," he said softly. "But nothing will get any better by smashing the computer to bits, ok? Just get back in there and I'll see to the other stuff being taken care of."

Axel nodded obediently and straightened his posture in the chair, putting his fingers gently on the keys once more, ready to throw himself back into the work of nestling into the myriad of numbers, letters and symbols that filled the screens in front of him.

"One thing though," Demyx said before Axel had had a chance to start up, "I hope you're aware of the risk that he might not remember a single thing..."

Axel slowly turned his head to pinpoint the other man with his sharp green eyes.

Demyx swallowed, but decided he should finish the sentence.

"...Vexen sort of told me something before... You know, it's not really _him_ in there..."

"I know," Axel replied, a heavy sadness having sneaked into his voice and features. "But I have to get him back out of there. I just have to."

Demyx silently left the room and Axel turned back to the computer screens.

"Are you sure you're ok? You look a bit... pale."

Riku examined his friend with worried eyes and put a steady hand on his shoulder to stop him from walking away. The sun was showing up its best side today and the heat radiating from the golden disc in the clear blue sky was whispering the promise of a not too distant summer at the beach.

Sora could almost smell the warm sand and the salty breeze of the ocean. He sighed and turned his eyes upwards to meet with Riku's concerned stare.

"Hey, the world to Sora; are you listening? I'm talking to you!" Riku smiled at Sora as the shorter guy absentmindedly pushed his friend's hand off his shoulder.

"You've been spacing out a lot lately," Riku commented as he got eye contact. "Is there something bugging you?"

Sora's eyes widened in surprise over the sudden closeness in the way the other guy acted.

"What? No, not really... I mean... Nah, it's nothing," he answered lingeringly while he tried to figure out whether or not he should tell him anything about the dreams, or worse yet, the happening in the park this morning.

"Nothing? Oh, I _know_ it's something, 'cause you really _can't_ lie."

Sora tried to smile at the comment.

He knew it was true.

Sora had never been any good at lying; it just didn't feel _right_ – and that obviously showed in his face as a direct negation of whatever it was he'd said.

"Alright, if you really must know, Riku, I've been having a hard time sleeping lately."

Riku's eyebrows shot upwards with interest.

"Oh? How come?"

Sora gave up on keeping it all secret, but still did what he could to leave out the actual content of the dreams.

"I've been having these weird thoughts lately, like, is any of this for real, or not? And it's been messing with my dreams!"

"Nightmares?" Riku asked and Sora felt obliged to tell the truth.

"Not really, at least not to begin with," he explained slowly.

"So what are they about then?"

Bingo.

Of course Riku just _had_ to ask him about _that_.

"Well... It's the same thing over and over again. I see places I've never been to and faces of people I've never seen before. But in the dreams, I know it all as if it was a part of me, being just as real as you and me standing here right now..."

Riku looked at him with a somewhat confused expression in his face.

"Sounds _really_ scary, dude," he said sarcastically and gave him a short smile.

Sora glared at him.

"_As I said_," he continued, "the dreams don't start out scary – they sort of gradually change."

Riku caught the tone of frustration in Sora's voice and straightened his features.

"I'm just fooling around," he excused himself. "Go on."

Sora sighed, wishing he hadn't met with Riku this day.

The afternoon classes would start in about fifteen minutes and he badly wished for the clock on the university's tower to speed up the pace a bit.

"It sounds stupid, I know, but it starts with moving shadows..." Sora began and glanced up at Riku from under his dark blond bangs.

When Riku didn't comment on this, Sora felt safe enough to continue.

"...Then the shadow things get eyes, I mean like big, yellow _glowing_ eyes – the scary kind... And it gets really dark around me, like it's eating me up – the darkness, I mean..."

Riku let out a low whistle.

"And then you wake up?"

Sora nodded.

"Yeah. Screaming and sweating as if I'd been chased by all the demons of hell..."he muttered.

"...And you've never been afraid of the dark?" Riku asked after some silent pondering. There was no sign of mockery in Riku's voice, only a touch of troubled concern.

Sora almost felt a smile build up in his face as he noticed this, but remained as serious as he could, so that Riku's attitude wouldn't change.

"Nope," Sora said to answer his question and slowly shook his head. "At least not as far as I can remember."

"Well," Riku started after some thought, "whatever it is, we can't have you walking around without sleeping. You could end up fainting from exhaustion or something."

Sora finally looked up from his shoes and met with Riku's worried eyes. At the mentioning of a possible case of fainting, Sora had started to wonder whether Riku knew about what had happened earlier in the morning.

Riku suddenly put both his hands on each of Sora's shoulders. He'd seen the troubled look in his younger friend's blue eyes and got a sudden feeling of his guessing being more exact than he'd wished for.

"Don't tell me it's already happened!"

Sora's face turned a bright red and he was about to look back down again, but Riku grabbed his chin between a finger and a thumb, forcing him to keep on looking him in the eyes.

"Sora, look at me!" he commanded him with a clear tone of worry in his voice. "If you've been having black-outs or faints, you really have to get some help – now!"

When Sora looked at Riku, the older boy let go of his chin and put his hand onto his shoulder instead.

Sora was surprised. He'd known Riku to be pretty thoughtful and caring in general, but he'd never actually thought he'd cared about him this much. After all, they barely knew anything about each other and only occasionally hung out on the university grounds. For some reason Sora had completely missed out on Riku wanting to be his friend for real.

A flash of the scenery from his dream came up in his mind at the thought and he felt like burning up with embarrassment. If Riku wanted to be his friend, Sora didn't have any objections at all. In fact, he was starting to think he himself had been wishing for it as well.

"Sora?"

Sora realized he was expected to produce an answer to something Riku had said.

"Oh, well, uhm...I..." he mumbled as he tried in vain to remember what Riku had asked him.

"When did it happen?" Riku's worry had suddenly turned into a serious demand to know everything and Sora gulped down his nervousness.

"Awww, come on, it's not as serious as you think, ok? I just felt a bit dizzy for a moment this morning when I was on my way over here, that's all!" Sora hastily explained and tried to back away a step so he could get free from Riku's grip on his shoulder, but Riku kept him put.

"That does it! Today you're coming home with me and I'll see what I can do to help you sleep through the night, got it?"

Sora nodded quickly in a hope to get free.

"Yeah, ok. Got it."

"Good," Riku said and relaxed a bit, releasing Sora's shoulder, only to tousle his hair a bit.

"So, what time do your classes end?"

Sora backed away from the hand molesting his dark blond spiky hair and gave Riku an odd look.

"What? You're actually serious about that?" he asked.

"Why not?" Riku raised his silver white eyebrows a bit. "You need sleep and I wanna' make sure you get it. That's what friends are for, right?"

Sora stood dumbfounded for a moment as he considered this.

"Well... Yeah, I guess..." he finally managed to mumble.

"So, when do your classes end today?"

"At four, but..."

"Good, mine ends ten to. So I'll be waiting for you at the main entrance at four. Got it?"

"But..."

"No buts! If you dare leave me hanging there Sora, I swear I'll find out where you live and I'll come dragging you with me back to my place."

Sora almost, just almost, got a bit scared by the low voice in which this had been uttered.

Sora nodded.

Then he glanced up at the clock placed high up on the tower on the top of the university building and realized he had about two minutes to get to his class before he'd be late.

"Shit! Gotta' run!" he blurted out and turned on his heels to start running.

"Don't forget; main entrance at four!" Riku called after him and Sora managed to show him a "thumbs up" before he rushed through the big doors leading into the main building of the Traverse Town University.


	4. 3 New acquaintances

**Chapter 3: New acquaintances**

Riku was a man of his word, Sora found out.

After his last class of the day was done, Sora headed out for the main entrance and just like he'd said he would, Riku stood there waiting for him, casually leaning against the wall next to the doors.

Sora couldn't help but noticing the hungry looks his friend was getting from girls and boys alike as they passed him on their way out.

Riku was good-looking, tall and slender, but fit and sporting a well built body. What drew the most attention though, was his aura of total self-awareness and control. In short; he was everything you wanted in a guy. Girls wanted his attention and love, while boys simply wanted to _be_ him.

Sora swallowed down a ball of nervousness that was threatening to build up in his throat and approached the silver-haired young man.

"Finally!" Riku breathed out with a smile and threw out his arms dramatically when he spotted Sora coming towards him. "I was starting to think you'd bailed out on me."

Before Sora had a chance to react and get away, Riku suddenly stepped up to him and put an arm across his shoulders.

"Are you up for some sleeping?" Riku said in a gitty voice and Sora could do nothing but smile back at him.

"Yeah, I guess. I'm tired enough, I tell you," Sora answered and got a nod from his friend in response.

"Then come with me and I'll make it happen!" he said, motioning Sora forward by the pressure of his arm still slung across the somewhat shorter guy's shoulders.

"But don't you think it'd be better if I just got home and..." Sora tried to object, but was shushed by Riku's finger as it was pressed against his lips

"Now we can do this the hard way, or the easy way. You obviously aren't sleeping all that well at your own place, right?" Riku reasoned slowly, winking at him with one eye before he continued. " Besides, I don't bring a lot of friends over to my place, so would you please do this for my sake, if not for your own?"

Sora looked at him as if he was seeing him for the first time.

"You don't... why? I mean, I thought you had a lot of friends..."

Riku slowly shook his head in reply, and for a moment his features were covered by a shade of sadness.

Sora suddenly realised he'd actually never seen Riku really hang out with anyone, except for himself.

"Uhm..." Sora hummed in a desperate try to fill out the sudden silence.

"Look, you're the only guy around here who doesn't know everything about me and whom I can talk to without risking to get forced into a closer contact than necessary," Riku said in a low voice. "I like your company, ok? You're honest, funny and just stupid enough to not care about asking who I am."

"Uhm...thanks, I guess..." Sora mumbled and looked down at his shoes as they walked. Maybe he should've asked Riku who he was when they'd first met, but the situation had been so overwhelming back then that he'd simply forgot all about it.

"Don't get me wrong," Riku added quickly," I'm not a bad person. It's just that everybody seem to think I'm either a psychopathic maniac, since I'm always by myself, or that I'm too high up on the social scale for anyone to even address me without being allowed to do so." Riku looked at Sora. "Am I making any sense at all to you?"

Sora tore his eyes away from the constant stare on his shoes and let them meet with Riku's.

"I, I think so. You're alone because people are afraid of you?"

"More or less, yes," Riku admitted in a sigh. Then he smiled softly. "But you're not."

Sora gave this notion a thought and started to wonder whether or not following this guy home was a good thing.

"Should I be?" he asked, feeling a tad stupid for doing so, but he couldn't help wanting to know for sure.

Riku burst out in a short and hearty laugh.

"You see? That's what I mean – you're a good guy, Sora. Almost too good for your own safety. But don't worry, I'm alright. I don't mean to do anything bad to you, I just wanna' help you."

Sora thought about asking why, but decided not to, and nodded instead to show him that he understood. They walked on in silence for a few minutes, Riku leading the way by the means of almost invisible nods in the right direction.

After a while Sora started to realize he didn't recognize neighbourhood they were in.

The high-rise houses had been replaced by high fences and brick walls circling big, exclusive villas in different styles and pale colours. For some reason Sora was starting to feel like he had been left unknowing of a lot of things when it came to Riku, like the fact that he lived in the Fifth District, with the really rich inhabitants of the city. Suddenly Sora became unusually aware of his clothes and what they looked like in comparison of the ones that Riku was wearing. Sora's baggy black pants, heavy sports boots in a former brilliant but now rather dusty yellow colour and his open black and white short-sleeved hooded jacket were all a bit worn and faded in the colours. Even the fairly new navy blue sleeveless sweater he wore underneath the jacket appeared a bit shabby after having paid a visit to his skills with the washing machine only two days ago.

Riku, on the other hand, looked as if he'd just stepped out of a fashion magazine. Everything on him - from the light purple sneakers and the matching pants, to the raven black sleeveless zipper polo and the ivory white jacket vest - looked brand new.

"Uhm... Riku, could you tell me something?" Sora asked a bit hesitatingly after a few more minutes of considering all the alternatives as of how Riku's clothes came to be such news to him.

"What do you want to know?" Riku asked with a smile.

"Are you rich or something?"

This lured another moment of laughing out of the taller of the two young men.

"What's so funny?" Sora asked a bit touchy.

"I'm sorry Sora, but you don't notice very much about what goes on over at the university, do you?" Riku replied as he dried a tear from the corner of his eye, still grinning widely.

"No," Sora answered a little grumpily. He didn't like being enlightened on his own naivety. It made him feel just a tad stupid.

"Don't get me wrong," Riku added when he heard the tone in his voice and saw his sullen face. "I'm just not used to people _not _knowing this about me."

"Well, then, let me remind you of the fact that I don't know _shit_ about you, other than you being the only guy in school who dared to back me up on my first day in town!" Sora muttered. "All this," he made a motion with his hands to point out their surroundings, "is BIG news to me, ok? I live in the friggin' Second District and the only reason I can afford the small apartment I have there is because I'm on a scholarship and my dad has some connections at work who let me live in their building for half the usual rent!"

Riku listened to him in silence until he'd finished.

"So you're saying...?"

"I'm freaked out by this neighbourhood and I would like to know if there is anything else that I should know about you before we get to your place and I get it shoved in my face!" Sora burst out with frustration.

Riku calmly nodded.

"I guess you're right. I'm just a little new o having to explain things about myself to anyone."

"No shit Sherlock!" Sora muttered.

"Ok, I don't think there are any other major things to warn you about, apart from my family, so here it is. Mom's a fashion designer over at _The Three Fairies_, and dad's the head of the _Traverse Travels_ and sort of owns the airport..."

Sora tried not to show any sign of surprise or of being impressed, but he couldn't help his chin dropping at the last part. Riku didn't comment on it, however.

"As for the rest of the family, I've got one sister, Naminé, and my brother..."

Just as they rounded a pillar to enter a huge front yard of emerald green grass, Riku was interrupted by a tennis ball that would have hit Sora straight on the nose, had not Riku seen it coming and quickly pulled him away from it.

The result of this was that the ball continued its route of flying out to the street, and Sora found himself to be for a short moment enclosed by Riku's muscular arms, tightly pressed up against his chest.

"...my brother is an asshole," Riku finished his sentence and glared at someone coming towards them in a jog.

Sora suddenly found himself in a loss for words as he saw the other guy approaching them. He was dressed the exact same way as Riku, the only difference being the colour scheme. This new guy's clothes were all in black, clear blue and ruby red. As he came closer, Sora noticed that he looked a lot like Riku. In fact, it was kind of like looking at a clone of him.

"Sorry about that, bro, I didn't see you coming," the duplicate Riku said and sent them both an evil smirk that made his former words turn into an obvious lie.

Sora wrinkled his nose.

This guy, however much he resembled the person holding him in his arms at the moment, was _not_ Riku. This guy, was deranged.

The deranged replica stopped about two steps away from them.

"I see you've brought a boyfriend," he said with a devilish grin. "He looks cute. Can I play with him when you get bored?"

Riku produced a sound close to a growl and Sora felt the arms around him tighten.

"Oh, buzz off Ansem!"

"Now, is that a way to treat your own brother? He's such a bore sometimes," Ansem said, the last comment directed towards Sora. "I'm sure you'll find my company a lot more interesting," he added with a wink of one eye.

Before Sora had a chance to turn down the offer, the closed fist style, Riku pushed him aside, making him stand behind him.

"Just get the hell away and leave him alone!" Riku said, his eyes almost shooting sparks of anger.

"Sheesh, Riku. If you're that possessive of him he'll definitely leave you. But don't worry, I won't touch him. Unless he wants me to."

"_Go away!_"

"Yada, yada, yada," Ansem replied wittingly and rolled his eyes at his brother, but never the less he strolled out to the street in order to retrieve the lost ball.

Riku was vibrating with aggravation, fists formed and un-formed as he breathed through his clenched teeth.

Sora silently stood by to wait it out.

"I'm sorry about that", Riku said after a moment of silence. "My brother's always been like that. He loves to make me angry..."

"He likes to hurt you, you mean," Sora noted and Riku turned around to face him.

"Yes," he said silently.

"So, are we still gonna' get inside or do you wanna' crash at my place instead?" Sora asked and smiled widely as Riku's face showed an expression of pure surprise over the offer.

"You really wouldn't mind staying?" he asked, having trouble believing the fact that Sora was still speaking to him.

"Yeah, sure, but you know, my place is guaranteed to be "Ansem-or-what's-his-name"-free."

Riku smiled weakly and with a hand on Sora's shoulder he started to move them both in the direction of the house again.

Sora finally noticed the huge white complex ahead of them. It was more or less a mansion, three floors high with big windows, a glassed-in terrace and red roofing tiles.

"Wow..." Sora breathed out in wonder as they got closer.

"Wait until you get inside!" Riku said with a little bit of his earlier enthusiasm back in his voice.

Riku opened the large door of dark wood and let them inside.

Sora looked around himself with equal shares of awe and fear. The size of the place and the expensive decorations filling it was somewhat intimidating.

"Riku, no offence, but I don't think I'll be able to sleep here, _ever_..."

The silver-haired young man smirked at his friend, reached out and tousled his hair, making Sora grimace and settled a bit of his fears.

"I kind of figured you'd say that when I saw how you freaked out over the neighbourhood before. Just let me pack some of my stuff in a bag and I'll follow you right back to your place instead."

"Sounds good," Sora replied and followed him as he started climbing the stairs leading to the second floor.

When upstairs, they walked through a dark corridor and entered the last room on the right, which proved to be Riku's.

The room was big and unexpectedly messy. In the upper corner of it stood a wide single bed, un-made and with a pile of school-books at the foot. All over the pale grey floor laid discarded clothes and on the bright blue walls hung posters of some rock-stars.

The only spot in the room that seemed to be free from the otherwise reigning mess, was a long writing desk stretching from one end of the outer wall to the other, standing right beneath the big window. The white surface of the desk was high polished and reflected the window's view over the garden and the north end of the city park, creating an illusion of greenery inside the room.

Apart from the reflection, the surface was only disturbed by the black laptop that was lying on the far end of the desk.

Sora let out a low whistle.

"Yeah, I know," Riku said with a laugh, "one would think I'd have a more tidy room, right?"

Sora nodded in response.

They were suddenly interrupted by a knock on the door frame and both the young men turned around at the sound.

Standing in the doorway was a girl about Sora's height, with pale blond hair and water coloured eyes, wearing a skirt suit of pristine white and a pale pastel pink top underneath the jacket.

The apparition looked from one to the other with a troubled expression in her face.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you had company..." she said, her voice just as pale and fragile as her appearance seemed to be.

"Oh, no worries, Naminé," Riku hurried to say and motioned for her to come inside the room. She didn't step inside, but she didn't leave either.

Sora watched her with the interest of the curious, while Riku found it to be a good time for introductions.

"Naminé, this is Sora, a guy I know from school, and Sora, this is my sister, Naminé."

"Hi!" Sora said enthusiastically and Naminé nodded her response.

"Riku, have you seen Ansem?" she asked, suddenly remembering why she'd wanted to speak with her brother.

Riku's face darkened a bit at the mentioning of his brother, nodding slowly.

"Yeah, Mr. Destroyer-of-the-world was trying to break Sora's nose with a tennis ball when we got here. Why d'you wanna' know?"

Naminé's features faltered for a bit at the mentioning of Ansem's welcoming.

"I just wanted to know what he's done to my sketchbook... I can't find it anywhere and I found him lurking about my room this morning. I thought he might know where it is."

"Should I go talk to him?" Riku asked her, his irritation towards Ansem obvious in his tone of voice.

"No, don't, I don't mean to interrupt you... I'll go talk to him myself..."

"No you don't, sis!" Riku objected and stepped over some comic books to get to her. "I'll go tell him off and then I'll follow Sora home." He dropped a bag he'd been packig at Sora's feet and was out the door and down the stairs before any of the others had a chance to stop him.

Sora stared after him like a puppy losing sight of its master. In front of him stood the pale apparition that was Naminé, looking just as dumbfounded by this turn of events as he felt.

"So..."she started after a moment of awkward silence. "You're the first friend he's brought here in a lot of years, you know."

Sora blinked.

"Well, I guess I'm the first one that's good enough then," he said with a strained smile.

Naminé observed him with an icy chill in her eyes.

"Since you've met Ansem and still stayed here, I guess that could be a correct assumption."

Sora raised an eyebrow.

"Huh?"

"Ansem isn't all that good with people," Naminé filled in and turned her eyes towards her white fluffy in-door slippers.

"Well, that's an understatement," Sora replied with a laugh. He then came to think of a question he'd been meaning to ask Riku.

"Hey, Nami...uh..."

"Naminé."

"Ok, Naminé, I was just wondering... They're like, identical twins, right?"

Naminé actually smiled at this. A pale and small smile, but a smile nonetheless.

"Yes. Riku's about three minutes older, but that's it."

"Ok, so why is it that one of them is great, while the other acts like a lunatic psycho on speeding drugs?"

Now Naminé smiled for real.

"I can see why he likes you. You have a way with words, I have to admit that."

Sora straightened his back at this, knowing he'd gotten a compliment of some sort, but not sure whether or not he should feel proud about it or linger on the fact that she thought he was speaking funny.

"None of us really know why Ansem is like that. He and Riku started out being quite alike, inseparable when kids, but as they turned seven or so, I think I was about five or six at the time, Ansem just started to do everything he could to make Riku cry or get mad. Later on it stretched out to include making just about every person he meets feel bad. It's as if he was ill or something..."

"Or something," Sora concluded as he let the information sink in.

Naminé returned her blue eyes to Sora.

"So, how about you then? Why are you here and what's your reason for hanging out with Riku? What's in it for you?"

The pale girl's porcelain face was showing a serious expression and a rock-solid determination.

The unexpected question and the suddenly hostile attitude confused Sora.

"What?"

Naminé looked at him in silent concentration for a moment, before she relaxed in a deep sigh.

"I guess you're actually here because he likes you then..." She said in a whisper. "How long have you known him?"

Sora felt like he was being cross-examined and was starting to get pretty annoyed by the whole situation.

"Since the start of last semester, ok? What's with all these questions, really? No wonder he doesn't bring many friends over here – as far as I've gotten to know you, all you guys seem to be totally nuts! I'm starting to guess Riku's the only sane person in this family!"

Naminé looked at him in wide-eyed surprise.

"I'm sorry..." she breathed out weakly, sincerity clear in her hushed voice. " It's just... Well, my brother's been through a lot of disappointments when it comes to friends... I just didn't want to see him hurt again..." She bowed her head slightly as she apologized, an act that didn't really surprise Sora. The pale girl simply seemed like the kind of person who bows a lot.

"Ah, no worries," Sora hurried to interrupt Naminé before she could say anything else. "I'm just not used to anyone asking so much about me."

They both looked at each other for a moment in thoughtful silence. Sora could hear someone's dog barking outside somewhere further up the street, but apart from that there were no sound to be heard.

Suddenly he realised why he felt like he knew Naminé from before; her face reminded him very much of someone else's. A face he hadn't seen in years. Naminé looked exactly like a blond version of Kairi, now that he'd come to think of it. This somewhat odd similarity in appearances reminded him of something else as well: The feeling of déjà vu the first time he'd met Riku. It was as if he'd met all of them, Riku, his brother Ansem and their sister Naminé before, somewhere.

He just couldn't figure out where or when.

He was about to ask Naminé about this, when it all hit him with a snap: his dream.

He'd had the dream once or twice already before he'd moved to where he lived now and before he'd met Riku. The part that he couldn't quite get was that he knew he'd dreamt of Riku and Naminé in the very first dreams. Only, in his dream, the setting had been different, as had their relations and clothes...

Sora knew there was something he should know about Naminé, Riku and Ansem, something important, but he couldn't grasp it. It was like a distant memory, slipping out of his hands or getting out of his reach whenever he went for it.

It was _very_ annoying.

Before Sora had a chance to ask Naminé about whether or not they'd actually met before, Riku showed up in the doorway, a strained smile on his lips as he turned to his sister.

"I'm sorry, sis, but I think he might have trashed it in the shredder at dad's office..." he said slowly and Naminé's reaction was a silently whispered "Oh".

A lonely tear found its way down her cheek.

"Was there something important in it?" Riku asked carefully, feeling bad for bringing the news.

"Only memories," Naminé mumbled and quickly dried the tear off her cheek with the back of her hand. "I really wish he'd stop doing this..."

Riku nodded with sympathy and gave her shoulder a squeeze of comfort as she turned around and left the room.

Sora watched in silence, not knowing how to properly react to all of it.

"I'm sorry about all this and for leaving you alone with Naminé like that," Riku started out as he turned to face Sora for the first time since he'd gotten back from chasing down his brother. "She can be a little odd sometimes, but she's alright".

Sora only nodded in response. She was odd, that was for sure. But then again, all three of the siblings seemed a bit different form the ordinary people in total.

"Don't worry," he said and smiled convincingly wide. "She just asked a few questions about who I am, nothing big, really."

Sora could see Riku relax as he said this. It was as if there was something else about his sister that Riku hadn't told Sora about, and from the look of it, he wasn't going to say anything either, unless it was necessary.

"So," Sora said to break up the silence that was threatening to build up again. "You've got everything packed?"

Riku nodded and grabbed his bag from where he'd left it on the floor.

"Lead the way," he said and made a gesture with his arm to urge him on.

"Yeah, as soon as I recognize my surroundings," Sora replied with a grimace. "Until then, I think it would better if you're the navigator of this ship".

Riku let out an amused snicker and they both left the room together.


	5. 4 Lock on target

**Chapter 4: Lock on target**

"Finally!" Axel burst out with relief and leaned back into the black fake leather office chair he'd been occupying the last six hours.

His neck was aching; giving him tiny sensations of needle-prick pain as he slowly and carefully straightened it out in a full body stretch. He was the only person in the room at the moment. All the others had left about fifteen or thirty minutes ago to get something to eat or drink.

Axel had stayed though.

He'd been too excited to interrupt the work and hadn't even noticed the slowly building hunger in his middle regions. He grimaced as a joint in the tested neck popped into place. He really needed to pay more attention to his posture while at work by the screen.

Axel took another look on the computer and afforded himself a slight smile.

The frustration he'd felt when he'd lost track of the guy earlier that day had caused him a headache close to migraine, especially since it had taken him so long to find him to begin with. But now, he felt he'd been able to make up for that little mistake.

Finally the string of shifting code that kept jumping around on the screen was enclosed in a digital grid locking it's pattern so that he would be able to find it no matter how many times it tried to escape.

These past two years had been a nightmare to Axel, not knowing what would happen or when it would come to an end. Thankfully the organization had been there all along, as a steady reminder of how things had been and how they could be once more.

Axel sighed as he watched the code shift.

Before all of this happened he'd never imagined something like this being possible. His world had been turned upside down in an instant that fateful day, all because of _him_.

A low growl escaped his lips at the thought of the traitor.

Diz had entered the organization as a saviour, bringing both his wealth and a million of codes and code-cracking systems with him. He was a literal genius when it came to computers. And the organization had welcomed him with open arms as he offered them his help in a time of need.

If he hadn't showed up, Axel was sure they would have been bankrupted and without finances, keeping up their job as the protectors of this world's most dangerous and most important information would have been close to impossible.

Of course, they were a secret association, so none knew what they really did; fighting off threats in the virtual world as well as in the real one.

So Diz's appearance had been more than welcome; a hacker with too much time on his hands who, for a change, didn't want to spend that time creating viruses and making people miserable. He'd wanted to help.

At least that had been his words and that was what they'd all believed.

Looking back at it, they had been nothing but stupid and desperate.

At first, Diz's attention to Roxas had been nothing out of the ordinary. The kid was a wonder of a code-cracker himself, and unusually young for someone in possession of that type of knowledge. He was the one with the key to all of their work, their front warrior.

After a while though, Roxas had started to feel uncomfortable by Diz's constant presence. He'd mentioned it to Axel, but Axel hadn't thought all that much about it at first.

"_Give it some time, he'll tire of you soon enough_," he'd said and laughed at the joke of someone ever getting too much of Roxas. The blond was handsome in a cute way and his company always lit up the scenery. At least that's what Axel thought.

When the subject had come up again, some week later, Axel had taken it more seriously. Diz had been monitoring Roxas' every move and Axel had started to notice it himself.

So when Roxas came to him the second time, Axel had confronted Diz.

"_What are you up to?_" he'd asked him after explaining what he'd observed and what Roxas had noticed.

"_Oh, nothing special. I'm just fascinated by the key bearer, that's all_", he'd replied, using the nickname as if it was a title, a job.

"_Well, you're freaking him out, so cool it down a bit, or I'll make sure you won't last very long here._"

Diz had chuckled at Axel's threat, as if knowing nothing could harm him.

This had of course made Axel more or less furious. As the organization's personified fire wall, a guard towards unwelcomed visitors, he most certainly didn't like not being taken seriously.

_"I'm warning you, Diz; Back off from Roxas, or you'll be toast before you know it!_" he'd added to the original threat, but Diz had just shook his head, smiling widely like a maniac.

"_So,_ I_ should back off, hm? How about you, then? Don't think I haven't noticed your affections towards the kid. Beeing too close to someone in this business makes you vulnerable, Axel. You might actually care if something happened. You might even get hurt._"

Diz's words had been stuck to Axel's memory since then. It had been mere insinuations, but he'd discovered the threats right away. And he'd gone straight to Xemnas to warn him.

Too bad for them all, it had been too late by then.

Like a Trojan, Diz had entered with welcomed offerings, lived in silence within their own walls while slowly taking all he wanted from them, and just before leaving, he had let loose the harm intended and revealed himself only after he knew he was safe to leave.

Axel had been the one who'd found Roxas.

He'd been searching along with the others throughout the building with no luck, until he'd returned to his bedroom to get a flashlight and a map over the labyrinth of catacombs underneath the big house.

Roxas had been lying lifeless on the floor, but with no visible sign of harm having been done to him.

Axel had rushed forward to pick him up, painfully aware of his fear for the blond not waking up. He'd been breathing, shallow and almost invisible breaths, but still.

Every day since then had passed in a blur of trying to find out what had been done to him and where Diz had gone to. Other errands had been put to the side, not entirely, but Axel guessed that the hinder towards their work had been what Diz had wanted all along. Why so, one might wonder, but the importance wasn't in his motives, but in his achievement, his deeds.

It had taken them one year to find out what had happened and why Roxas wouldn't wake up.

His soul, his memories and his person and mind had all been somehow extracted and put elsewhere for some sort of safe-keeping.

Axel let out another sigh as he watched the screen.

The screen light bathed his face in its familiar shifting green colour as the codes moved across the black background.

The redhead leaned forward and poked at the string of code that, unlike the rest of them, couldn't move out of sight.

"Found you, buddy."


	6. 5 The ending of a dream

**Chapter 5: The ending of a dream **

Sora had a distinct feeling of being watched as he and Riku entered his single room apartment on Merchant Street in the second district. The feeling had appeared somewhere around the third district, when they'd gotten onto the monorail train, and it had been growing pretty intense by now.

He closed the door firmly after Riku had entered and made sure to lock it.

Riku noticed this and gave him a somewhat amused smile.

"Are you afraid we'll get jumped at in our sleep or something?"

Sora snorted at the comment.

"No! I just..." but when he couldn't come up with a good reason to lock them in, he just shook his shoulders. "Look, we're in the second district, OK? My neighbours have warned me about not locking the door, so I lock it."

At least it was part of the truth, Sora thought and hung up his jacket on one of the hooks on the hanger next to the door.

Riku looked around himself in silence for a moment, then let out a low whistle.

"I know," Sora said as he sat himself down on the bed, which unusually enough was made up. "It's way smaller than your place. But it's cosy enough for me."

Riku smiled and slowly shook his head at him.

"Yeah, I guess I understand your reaction a bit better now. I mean, my _bedroom_ is probably twice the size of this place... but I agree on the cosy part. It must be good to have your own place."

Sora thought about it for a moment before he answered.

"Yep. This is my haven", he said with emphasis on the first word.

"Great haven," Riku said honestly and sat himself down in the worn greyish blue couch that Sora explained was going to be his bed for the night.

"Have you noticed something funny?" Riku suddenly said and turned to face Sora. "We've got the same posters on our walls.

Sora blinked, took a look around his small apartment and nodded. He'd noticed this back at Riku's place, but now he also noticed that they were paced in the exact same pattern.

A chill moved down his spine as he tried to figure out the odds of such a thing happening. The feeling of remembering something from a past life came over him and he looked over at Riku. For the moment the silver haired teen was sitting bent over Sora's collection of videogames stacked in piles over by the TV.

There was a tingling in the back of his mind, telling him there was something he should know about this guy, something from before: a memory untouchable, something that was just about one inch too far away for him to reach it.

Just like with Naminé, Sora now got a distinct feeling of something being a bit messed up with the image of Riku that he was seeing in front of him at the moment. Riku was his friend: that he _knew_. Naminé was a bit trickier, as if she'd done something to him in the past that he couldn't remember as anything but a feeling of insecurity whenever being around her. And then there was Riku's twin, Ansem.

Ansem was straight through bad. Period. But he wasn't showing his true face, instead he was hiding behind Riku's appearance. Or at least that was what it felt like to Sora. And so he was back to Riku: his friend... Or was he?

Suddenly it was as if a switch had been flicked to "on" in Sora's mind and he got a very clear image of the silverhaired guy in his room.

Riku... was dangerous.

The thought flashed by in an instant, almost as if someone else had said it out loud.

Riku was his friend, but he was also dangerous, more dangerous than he appeared to be, but Sora really couldn't figure out why he felt like that, no matter how hard he tried.

"Earth to Sora, something wrong?" Riku was suddenly sitting not more than an arm's length away from Sora, waving his hand in front of his face to get his attention.

Sora blinked and focused his eyes on Riku,realizing he'd been staring out into the empty space for quite some time.

"What? Uhm...no, I'm fine. I just spaced out for a moment," he said apologetically and rubbed his hand at the back of his neck in an embarrassed manner. "I guess I'm a bit tired, that's all."

Riku seemed to relax for a moment, but in the next minute, he moved swiftly from his crouched down position on the floor to sit right next to Sora on the bed, a cool hand suddenly put on Sora's forehead.

"Well, you don't seem to have a fever, so I guess that could be the case," he said and pulled back the hand.

"What?"

"You being tired," Riku clarified and Sora nodded without knowing what to say next.

Sora could feel a surge of heat rising to his cheeks. How could he ever have thought of this guy to be dangerous? He was just...

...sitting uncomfortably close to him on his bed...

Sora nervously nudged himself a bit away from him.

"Am I making you uncomfortable?" Riku asked in a low voice and discretely moved in closer again, making Sora want to get up from the bed, staying put only because he didn't want to look silly.

"Wh-what? N-no, not really," he stuttered and felt the blush of embarrassment on his cheeks grow. "It's just that I'm not used to having someone other than me myself here, that's all."

Riku softly put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Well, we could change that, right?" hesaid and smiled, eyes glittering as he moved his face closer to Sora's.

Sora almost fell off the bed when a knock on the door unexpectedly broke the silence.

"Expecting someone?" Riku asked curiously with an lifted eyebrow.

Sora shook his head in response, but still scrambled quickly to his feet in order to answer the door.

"Who ever it is, he'll most definitely leave us alone if you just don't open the door. Come back here and sit with me," Riku said and patted the bed on the spot where Sora had been sitting right before he tumbled to the floor.

"What? I can't do that, he must have heard us by now and know we're in here," Sora objected and reached for the door handle, but was stopped by Riku, who in an instant had gotten up to stand behind him and now grabbed a hold on his wrist, turning Sora around to face him.

Standing like that, close up and almost nose to nose, Sora could feel his heart beat pick up the pace.

"What are you d..." Sora started to ask, but Riku put a finger to his lips to hush him.

"Don't open the door. Please?" he said in a whisper, his eyes glittering with fear mixed emotions and his voice so pregnant with sadness it put Sora a bit off guard.

"What's the matter with you?" Sora asked him as another knock was heard from the other side of the door.

Sora turned his eyes away from Rikus, managed to twist his upper body around and turned the lock open.

"I tried to warn you," Riku said behind him. "I liked what we had, Sora. I thought you liked it too. I guess I was wrong."

Sora turned to face him again and looked at him with the confusion clear in his expression.

"What are you talking about?"

As Riku didn't answer him right away, Sora turned back around and pulled down the handle.

"You're acting really strange right now, Riku, you know that?"

When the door swung open, Sora took a step back in surprise and couldn't help but dropping his chin.

On the other side of the door stood a tall, slender guy with bright red hair and intense eyes of emerald green.

Sora knew that face.

He'd seen it in his dreams.

For a moment everything was still.

"Hi, Rox. Time to get home."

Sora backed away as the red haired man stepped into the apartment.

Suddenly Riku had stepped in front of Sora.

"Don't take him away," Riku said. It was sounding more like an order than a plea.

The sentence was simple and the meaning of the words absolute, his voice putting strength behind every syllable.

"Oh, don't start on me with that crap," the familiar stranger said in a grimace of dislike. "You've had your fun, now let him get back to the real world, all right?" he added and threw Sora a look over Riku's shoulder.

"Roxas, come on, you've got to remember me!"

Sora was shaking.

Too much was happening too fast.

Riku, Ansem, Naminé... and now this guy. All of them faces that had appeared in his dreams before he'd met them. If this part of the dream were turning into reality, did that mean that the other things in the dream would follow and become real as well?

The image of the living shadows slowly engulfing him filled his mind for a moment and he backed further away from the redhead in fear.

"This can't be happening..." he mumbled slowly, shaking his head in doubt while his eyes stayed focused on the strange man, unable to stop staring.

The tall redhead rolled his eyes upwards.

"Oh, _come on_!" he let out in an exasperated moan. "Give me a break, will ya'? I'm not going to hurt you; I'm _trying_ to _save_ you! Get it?"

He made a move to get closer to Sora, but Riku cut him off.

"Leave him alone!" he spat at the stranger furiously. "He's doing fine where he is, so just leave him! Get out!" Riku's voice was growing in strength and Sora could almost swear he saw rage seeping out of him, making the air around him vibrate with energy.

"Oh, just great," the redhead mumbled, sounding more annoyed than alarmed by Riku's protective act. Then he turned towards Sora again. "Look, have you seen this guy's true form yet? Because I'd hate to be the one bursting your bubble man, but I've spent two years looking for you and I'm not gonna' leave you here because of an stupid Trojan anti-virus system telling me to do so. I'm not going to let you disappear again! No way, no how!"

"Why are you doing this?" Sora suddenly asked him with a broken voice. "_Who the hell are you_?"

The redhead was taken aback for the moment as he discovered the tears tracing down the cheeks of the blue eyed guy in front of him. Then he sighed heavily.

"You really don't remember anything, do you?" He made another try to get closer, but once more Riku stopped him, effectively placing himself in front of Sora, protective to the point of possessive.

"This guy here," the redhead said and made an inclination at Riku, "he isn't real. At least not in this world, right here, right now. This is a protective system put in to keep you hidden from anyone that would want to find you, like me. He looks like this because of an implanted memory you've got, connected to a guy looking just like this. It's to make you trust him so that he can stay close."

Riku gave off a low murmuring growl in response to this, but stayed in his place, his eyes having taken a shade of piercingly sharp turquoise.

"But guess what?" the redhead continued. "He messed up. He messed up big time, and that's how I found you."

At the last words the man turned back his emerald eyes to Sora.

"I have to get you out of here before your real self dies, OK?"

Sora blinked and looked from the redhead to Riku and back again.

"My _what_? He's _what_?" he screamed out in confusion as images of his dream kept flashing by his eyes. Images of a younger Riku on a beach, laughing and fencing with a wooden sword. Images of Kairi as a teenager, smiling at him across a classroom. And the darkness that swallowed him up, while Riku, in another form, stood there laughing at him. A Riku who'd been deformed and used by the shadows that swallowed him up.

"_NO_!"

Sora screamed from the bottom of his heart.

"You're lying! You're lying! It can't be like that! I can't be... It never happened, 'cuase I'm here, right? I'm _me_, I'm _Sora_!"

Sora was down on his knees, his entire body shaking from the shock of having all the facts thrown in his face, fighting the possibility of this to be true, not wanting it to settle.

The green eyes glittered with compassion and sadness as the red-haired man slowly shook his head.

"No, you're not, buddy," he said softly. "You're an image of him. Sora was the one before you. _You_, are Roxas. You're my friend and I want to save your life while there is still time, if you'll just let me try.

A threatfull growl from Riku turned the redhead's attention back to Riku.

"You're not getting him! You're not taking him away from me again!"

This made the redhead flinch.

"What did you say?"

Riku suddenly started to actually ooze of rage, and black smoke appeared around him.

"You're not taking him away from me again!" he repeated himself as his body was suddenly enclosed by armour of dark tissue and a strange sword of sorts, shaped as a dark bat wing, appeared in his hand.

_The wing-blade._

Sora tried his best to ignore the sudden surge of memories that came with the sight of this weapon. His inner sense of reality was in turmoil, making him unsure of whether or not he was actually awake.

"So this is what happened to you?" the strange man asked Riku. "This is what's left of you?" he said, pity apparent in his voice.

Sora finally managed to take his eyes off the scene and looked down on the floor, closing his eyes in a try to focus his thoughts.

"What's happening?" he mumbled at the same time as he wished not to get an answer to the question.

That's when Riku attacked.

Seemingly without effort, the redhead dodged the attack, stepping to the side and in an instant he was next to Sora, holding him in his arms.

"Everything will be OK in just a moment, trust me," he whispered into Sora's ear.

"Why should I trust you? I don't know you!" Sora yelped in panic as he tried to escape the tight grip.

"I won't let you take him from me!" Riku yelled from the other side of the room, the voice thundering in the small space.

"Close your eyes," the redhead whispered again, taking no notice of the raging teen behind his back.

Sora did as he was told, all too happy to escape the mess his world had turned into. He had no strength left to keep fighting back.

The red-haired man then put out his hand towards Riku and a sudden surge of energy made a ring of fire appear around himself and Sora, separating them from Riku.

Frustration and agony mixed in his face as Sora opened his eyes to see what had happened.

"Let go, Riku, and you'll be free from this fake world too!" the redhead called out to his opponent, but Riku didn't seem to listen.

Instead, he looked at Sora with an unmistakable pain showing in his eyes.

Slowly he reached out his hand towards Sora.

"Sora, don't listen to him! Stay with me. Please."

Before Sora was able to answer him, the redhead tightened his grip on him.

"I hate to tell you this, Riku, but this isn't your guy, and deep down you know that too, don't you?" he said slowly. "I know it hurts to admit it, but this isn't _your_ Sora; it's _my_ Roxas in a disguise. And I need him to come with me.

Riku suddenly changed his form again, taking the shape of his younger self, the one Sora knew from his dream.

"Take my hand, Sora! Stay with me!" he called out, his hand still outstretched towards his friend.

But the flames separating them suddenly grew higher and more intense as he tried to get closer.

"I thought you liked me!" Riku said in one last desperate try to make Sora move towards him.

Sora looked at him in wonder and disbelief.

Slowly, he came to realize that he really didn't know the guy in front of him. And he couldn't remember anything important about his own life before the last two years that had passed, only short glimpses without connection.

He looked at the face of the man holding him in his arms, the sharp green eyes at the moment focused on Riku, and something suddenly clicked inside him, something closer to a real memory; a feeling of deep going and unquestionable trust.

This guy was real.

The image of Riku wasn't.

And in that moment, Sora decided to trust the redhead.

"Riku, I'm sorry," Sora said, weighing every word, "but I don't think I know you."

With this, Riku suddenly lost all colour in his face and Sora almost thought he heard his fictive heart breaking.

Without another word, Riku stepped into the fire, his eyes steady on Sora's face.

"Goodbye then. Forgive me," he whispered as the fire caught on to him, making his appearance shift and flicker as the program that he was made up by was slowly decoded and disposed of in the fire created by the redhead's programming.

Sora didn't want to see it, but he watched anyway. He had to see for himself that this wasn't a real person that was slowly burning to cinders in front of him.

A heavy sigh escaped the redhead and Sora looked up at him.

"You seem awfully sad to be the one who won," he noted, his own voice shaking and raspy from the screaming and crying.

"I feel for him. It's an unfair destiny for one like him. He used to be one of the greatest blade wielders in history. He fell for the temptations of the darkness, was saved by his best friend only to watch him being devoured by the very shadows that he'd been freed of through the intervention of this friend. And now, this sliver of a soul, detached from its body and weaved into a coded program, being tricked into protecting someone in the appearance of his lost friend, only to die losing him again."

Sora thought this through and tried to make sense of it, but couldn't.

"I know now that I didn't really know him, but I don't know you either," he said slowly.

The redhead looked down and his green eyes met with Sora's blue.

"So you really don't remember me?"

Sora shook his head.

"Just your face. I've seen you in my dreams. But I don't know why. Who are you?"

"My name is Axel. Got it memorized?"

Sora slowly nodded.

"It fits."

He looked at the spot where Riku had been standing as the flames consumed him. Now there was only fire.

"So now what?"

"I'lltake you home," Axel said with a slight smirk.

"How?"

"Close your eyes and count down from thirteen. You'll wake up right where you should be and I'll do what i can to help you remember who you are. I owe you that."

"Why?"

Axel giggled.

"Because you've always been there for me before. It's my turn to help you now."

Sora closed his eyes and wished for the dream to end.

He missed not knowing anything about the world in general, to be spending all his days on a beach on a far away island together with his friends. He missed Kairi.

"Will it hurt?" he asked, without opening his eyes.

"No," Axel replied, patting his head and soothing his confused mind at the same time as he took a firmer grip on him. "Start counting."

Sora obliged. As he closed his eyes pictures stated to dance before his eyes, like glimpses of memories lost.

"13..." Riku's face in front of him, full of life and love.

"12..." An image of an island tree house flashed before his eyes.

"11..." Kairi laughing at him and Riku doing something. All the memories made no sense to him. He'd never experienced any of them as far as he knew, and still the images brought forth a flood of emotion and nostalgia.

"10..." He saw Riku, still smiling, but in a different way, with darkness enclosing him.

"9..." A city laid in darkness a rain filled night, neon lights and thunder composing the background for a fight between men and shadows. The place seemed real, but something told him it didn't really exist.

"8..." Traverse Town at dusk. He'd been there one time, but he couldn't remember why.

"7..." Naminé; a pale girl in a pale room. Lonely, sad and more powerful than anyone could ever believe.

"6..." A clock tower at dawn, a view overlooking a town he couldn't find a name for, golden in the sunshine...

"5..." A name flashed by before the image of the town disappeared. Twilight Town.

"4..." Friends he'd spent his younger years with...

"3..." Hayner, Pence, Olette...

"2..." Shadows with glowing eyes moving towards him. Heartless.

"1..." A red-haired man smiling softly at him. Axel.

"0..." _My name is_...


	7. 6 Waking up alive

**Chapter 6: Waking up alive**

"Roxas?"

Axel's voice was heard somewhere nearby.

He slowly opened his eyes.

The sudden contact with light made the eyes sting and he flinched, closing them again for a short moment, before opening them again.

He took a deep breath, tasting the air, smelling it. He felt so _alive_!

"Hey, you're awake?"

A new voice, the words coming in an uncertain tone, as if the speaker didn't dare to believe what he saw.

He turned his head to the side and met the pale blue eyes of a young man with blond hair made up in a style that left it standing straight up on the top of his head, but flat down on the sides.

A name flashed by as the features of the face started to seem familiar.

"Demyx...?"

His throat felt dry and sore, his voice sounding just as raspy as it felt, but the blond had heard him and understood.

"Axel get in here!" Demyx called out the door to the room and smiled widely. "He's awake, and he knows who I am!"

Demyx somehow managed to sound like a child with a big pile of candy in front of him, over filled with joy and excitement, and still keep looking like the young adult he was.

"Rox?"

Axel's voice was closer now and soon his face came into view.

"Roxas? Are you alright, buddy? Do you know who I am? "

Roxas smiled faintly, a warm feeling filling him up at the sight of his friend.

"Axel," he whispered slowly and managed to lift a finger towards his forehead. "Got it memorized," he added with a short laugh.

"Yeah, that's right," Axel said, smiling with relief.

Roxas wrinkled his face in concentration as he took the room in.

"Where... where am I?" he asked after a moment's thought and once again Demyx's face came into view beside Axel's.

"In your room at the Oblivion mansion. You've been out for some time now, so we figured you'd like to wake up here instead of in the lab."

Roxas got an image of a large complex building with eight or more floors and a city some mile away.

"I... I've been out?" he asked, uncertain of what Demyx had meant by that.

"Yeah," Demyx answered, suddenly looking a lot less joyful and gave Axel a look of uncertainty himself.

Axel sighed. A heavy sigh, filled with worry, heartache and most of all sadness.

"You've been in something close to a coma for the last two years, Rox. Don't you remember anything?"

Roxas looked from one of them to the other as he tried to grasp what they'd told him.

"T-two..._years_?" he asked in disbelief.

Both the other men nodded.

"But... he said..." Roxas started and remembered something about Diz mentioning he'd be feeling a bit nauseous, but that he'd be doing a lot better when he woke up in the morning.

"Who said what?" Axel demanded to know, his clear green eyes sharp.

"He said I'd only sleep for a night... not two years..."

"Who told you that, Rox? What happened?" Axel repeated himself and leaned in closer to him.

"I... as soon as Roxas tried to answer the question, something else came to his attention that almost blocked him completely; A memory of a silverhaired young man burning up and turning into thin air, Axel holding onto him in the midst of the inferno. But he hadn't been himself, he hadn't been Roxas.

"Axel..." he said lingering as he tried to focus on the redhead's face. "Who... who's Sora?"

Both Demyx's and Axel's faces showed up a display of utter surprise and confusion for a few seconds.

"What?" Demyx finally said, not having the slightest idea of where Roxas had gotten that name from. "You mean _the_ Sora?"

Axel glared at Demyx and the blond shut up quickly.

However, Roxas kept his eyes on Axel.

"Who is he?"

Axel coughed into his fist as he tried to gather his thoughts enough to be able to give him an answer.

"Sora _was_ a keaybearer, before you were. He..."

"...was killed by his best friend's betrayal."

Axel turned around to look at the one who'd interrupted him. A young blue-haired man had entered the room and came into Roxas' view.

A name linked itself to him as Roxas' memory started to wake up.

"Zexion," he mumbled. The new visitor gave him a short bow of his head.

"That's not the story as I was told," Axel ovjected.

Zexion only stared coldly at him with the one eye that was showing from behind his thick bangs.

"As I recall it, Axel, _I'm_ the historian of this organization, not you. And I'm telling you the same facts that are written in the databases and the volumes of recollections gathered in the dusty library archives: He was betrayed and this lead to his death as the shadows of the system consumed him."

The two of them stared at each other with cold hatred for a few moments, before Axel averted his eyes and turned back to looking at Roxas.

"Does that answer your question?" he asked in a low voice, trying hard not to let the simmering fire of irritation be heard.

"I think so. Maybe, " Roxas answered, still a bit confused by the memory.

Zexion smiled coldly.

"Good then. I'm here to tell you that Xemnas wants to see you," he turned to Demyx and wrinkled his nose, as if disgusted by finding him there, "not you, Demyx," and then turned back to Axel and Roxas, "but you two, as soon as Roxas feel good enough to walk. Is that clear?"

Axel's face went through a series of expressions before he answered Zexion with a quick nod.

"Yes. Is he in the office, or at the lab, or..."

"The office," Zexion interrupted him with an annoyed voice. "He'd prefer to see that it won't take you too long to get there. Try to make it within an hour."

Axel grimaced at this.

"Really now? Is that all then?" He pressed the words through clenched teeth, careful not to say what he felt like saying about that kind of demand.

Zexion nodded.

"Yes, I think so. Now, I'll be on my way, duty calls," he said with a bored expression on his face and walked out of the room.

Demyx looked long and hard at the door, until he was certain that the blue-haired man was out of hearing distance.

"Phew, he's so _mean_," he breathed out and relaxed for a bit.

Axel didn't say anything, but his green eyes were practically glowing with held back fury.

Roxas watched them in silence, feeling strangely detached to it all, as if it didn't concern him.

Axel turned his attention back to Roxas when he realised that he was watching him.

"Do you think you're able to take a little walk any time soon, Rox? 'Cause i'm afraid we'll just have to do our best to follow those orders," he said apologetically, the fury suddenly replaced with concern.

Roxas wriggled his toes underneath the comforter and bent his knees. He found it odd to discover all of his muscles still functional after two years of rest.

Demyx caught his perplexed facial expression and found it best to explain a thing or two.

"We had you wired up to every physiognomic machinery we could find in order to keep you alive, so we sort of added daily training of the muscles as well. Electrical impulses can do a whole lot of good if you use them wisely," he said with a smirk and Roxas had to smile himself. Demyx seemed to have that effect on people.

Even Axel pulled up the corners of his mouth for a bit when he saw Roxas' smile.

"Just give me a moment or so to gain some balance and I think I could do it", Roxas answered Axel's question, then tooka second look at himself and added: "And maybe a change of clothes? Going to see the boss in one's pj's just doesn't seem like a good idea."

Axel finally lightened up enough to laugh and Demyx's smile widened.


	8. 7 Reason for treason

**Chapter 7: Reason for treason**

Xemnas' office was placed one floor above the dormitory level and it took a good fourty minutes for Axel to bring Roxas the distance, mostly due to the blond refusing Axel's offer to carry him.

They still managed to get there in time, though.

As they entered, the man who'd called for them came forward to give Roxas a hand in getting over to one of the two armchairs placed on the visitor's side of the big oak desk at the centre of the room.

Axel sat himself down in the remaining armchair, seemingly relaxed and comfortable, while Xemnas took place behind the desk.

The leader of the organization was a very charismatic man, with olive skin and ivory coloured hair reaching down to his shoulders. His golden eyes sparkled with vitality and curiosity as he watched the two visitors.

"Now," he said slowly, his voice filling the big dusky room as if he'd had a hidden microphone on him and speakers placed out along the walls, "I want to know everything about this matter: How it happened to begin with, how you, Axel, managed to work it out and find Roxas, and what you did to bring him back. It's important that we find out what exactly it was that Diz did and what he could possibly have gained by doing it."

Axel nodded his understanding and Roxas simply imitated his move, hoping it would be the right thing to do.

Xemnas turned to Roxas.

"Let's start with you, then. Do you remember anything of what happened when you..." Xemnas paused in order to find a good word for what he wanted to say. "...fell asleep?"

Roxas closed his eyes in deep thought.

"I remember having talked to Axel about Diz acting funny around me..." he started and paused for a moment in a try to gather his thoughts. "After that, I believe I went ahead to go inform you, sir, about it, since Axel had advised me to do so."

Axel nodded his confirmation on this when Xemnas looked at him.

"But then... I didn't get here, did I?" Roxas asked hesitatingly.

Xemnas shook his head.

"No, you didn't."

Roxas thought about this for a moment before he continued.

"I remember meeting Diz in the corridor by the archives... He told me he had to do something... He needed _me_ to do something of great importance for the war of light and dark – or something like that. It's all fuzzy and messed up to me, but he somehow got behind me and said I'd be sleeping for a while and wake up in the morning when everything would be alright."

Roxas looked at Axel for support and got a smile in reward.

Xemnas seemed to consider what Roxas had told him as he sat in silence for a moment, his eyes focusing on a spot somewhere beyond the room they were in.

"Axel," he then said and Axel had to think for a brief minute about how to put what he knew into words.

"Hrm. As you already know, I found Roxas on the floor in my room the same day that Diz sort of disappeared."

Xemnas nodded and Axel went on.

"About eleven months after that, I happened to run into a strain of coding that didn't look quite right. I was trying to find a virus in the city network system and that's where I found it, more or less by a mere coincidence. I checked it's source and after some time of research, one month later I managed to find a program of sorts hidden within the our own security system. What broke the lock was a mere toying with plausible aliases and passwords for someone wanting to oppose or challenge us. I simply tried out every enemy name I knew from our history. It took about another month and a half to finally get it right though."

"What was it?" Xemnas asked impatiently.

"The alias was a coded name translating to 'heartless/nobody' and the password, hold on to something now, was 'Ansem'."

Xemnas' eyes widened and he took a deep breath.

Roxas realised that the name for some reason rang a bell in his still somewhat fuzzy memory.

"Once I got in," Axel continued, "I found a whole world, a sort of digitally created alternate reality, circling around the birthplace and surroundings of the home of the last keyholder: Sora."

Axel made another pause to let it all sink in before he continued.

"I had some trouble realising what it was that I'd discovered, but it still took about six months to break up the coding into more exact information and then three more months to figure out the purpose of all the characters involved. It was only about two days ago that I finally managed to find a code in the system that wasn't like the others: a protective unit in the shape of a Trojan virus with a life of its own. This protective unit had the shape of none other than Riku, another codecracker we've had in our crew and a friend to Sora."

Xemnas made another wide-eyed face.

"The dark key?"

Axel nodded.

"The very person. Or at least, a string of his memories encoded to be attached to the named protective unit."

Roxas once more saw the image of a silver-haired guy standing in an inferno of flames.

Riku... The name made a resonance somewhere deep within his heart and Roxas felt a sudden urge to scream out loud as the information of his memories rushed over him without making any sense. But he kept quiet and tried his best not to let his inner turmoil show in his face as he focused on what Axel was talking about in a try to calm down.

"Anyhow, this Riku-code encircled and sort of 'protected' a particular string of ever shifting code. Once I managed to put things together I almost locked it this morning, lost it in the last moment only to find it again and finally enclose it within a code-trap."

Another pause. Xemnas nodded for Axel to continue.

"That was when I got certain that I'd actually found what turned out to be Roxas' mind. I drew it back out from the coding by wiring Roxas to the machinery of mind-messing stuff down in the lab, you know the VR-stuff, but before that, I created a character code of my own in order to go in there and guide him in the right direction. After that was done, I had to undo the protecting 'Riku'-code in order to get to what in this world was shaped as Sora, namely Roxas' mind. Once I'd guided him in the right direction I only had to sit back and wait to see if it all had worked."

Xemnas hummed and looked at Roxas in deep thought.

"That ever shifting code string", he said after another silent minute had gone by, "it was disguised as Sora, you said?"

Axel nodded.

"Yes, it had his appearance and from what I can understand, for some reason it enclosed a massive amount of data, very much similar to that of the memory bank collected by the Neurologically Altered Memory Input or Neutralisation Experiment".

Xemnas raised his eyebrows at this, his eyes suddenly seeming bigger as the surprise was growing obvious in his face.

"The NAMINÉ?" he said with a slight doubt in his voice. "I thought that program was deleted years ago, after that mishap of memory replacement failure."

Axel nodded again.

"I thought so too, until just recently when I found its material being used in this fake world."

Roxas was staring out into the air as he tried to grasp the information thrown at him.

Sora, Naminé, Riku, Ansem – All names belonging to the history of the organization, made into actual people and memories in his own mind by the simple use of hypnosis and a VR-input... One question kept circling around his thoughts of confusion: Why?

Xemnas laid his forehead into a set of deep wrinkles as he tried to figure out what all of this meant and Axel waited patiently for him to ask another question, the one question he knew that all three of them had been thinking during the main part of this meeting, and the one question he still hadn't found an answer to.

"I wonder..." Xemnas mumbled and let his eyes fall once more on Roxas. "What could possibly be the reason to all this?" he went on and started to move his fingers slowly up and down on the polished black surface of his desk, creating a drumming sound that echoed in the tense silence of the room.

"Why go through the trouble of breaking into our system without taking it out completely, create a digital version of an AU and put in strictly forbidden and in some cases dangerous data, just to hide the mind of one person? Why do all this, when he could have just killed him straight off or ruined our entire system?"

Axel looked over at Roxas and noticed a sudden paleness in his friend's features. He felt a sting in his chest at the thought of what could have happened and thanked the fates that Roxas was still alive.

"Maybe," Roxas said in thought as he was starting to get all the pieces of the puzzle together, "maybe he wanted me alive, needed me for something later on and figured he'd simply put me away for safe keeping in a way that both kept you busy looking for me and in the same time served as a way for me to somehow learn about whatever it was that this Sora-guy had that made him special".

Xemnas and Axel both looked at him as if they'd had an simultaneous epiphany.

"Of course..." Axel mumbled.

"The code keys... within the memory bank..." Xemnas continued.

"It could only be un-locked by someone resembling Sora enough to be able to adapt to his line of thinking without losing himself in the process..." Axel cut in.

All of a sudden, Roxas got a clear image of a group of islands in a tropical climate and a huge white coloured and silver ornamented portal with locked doors and a huge silvery key with a golden grip. There was a dark voice, someone who had whispered something in his ear as he'd fallen asleep.

"This world has been connected..." Roxas mumbled as he started to truly understand the meaning of what he was seeing. "It's a riddled code... 'one who understands nothing, knows nothing'... it's a _riddle_!"

Axel and Xemnas looked at him in utter curiosity as he had said this out loud.

"A riddle for what?" Axel asked, confused and a little worried that his friend had gone a bit crazy after all.

"The key to the world! He wanted me to enter the _Kingdom Heart_!"


	9. 8 The sacrifice

**Chapter 8: The sacrifice**

"He..._what_?" Axel said, his voice cracking at the sudden outburst.

Xemnas looked like he'd been slapped in the face, his chin dropped and his eyes widened in surprise.

"He wants me to hack into the Kingdom Heart," Roxas clarified, slowly this time.

Axel sank his head and closed his eyes while he tried to gather his thoughts. When he looked up, his face was sad.

"Are you sure you got it right, Rox?"

Roxas nodded. He didn't have to go over the puzzle pieces again, he was certain of the answer.

Xemnas looked from Roxas to Axel and back again, his face now shut, the expression stern.

"If that really is what Diz had in mind, we've got more trouble than we first thought," he said slowly.

Roxas raised an eyebrow.

"How come?"

Xemnas gave Axel another look before he answered.

"How much do you know about the Kingdom Heart?"

Roxas shook his shoulders.

"Not much, I'm afraid," he said honestly. "Only that it's the biggest collective memory unit existing, every hacker's nightmare and highest dream in one. If someone would manage to get it opened, that person would have access to just about every single file ever created on a computer, anywhere and everywhere in the world."

Xemnas nodded slowly.

"All of that is true," he said, putting his hands together so that his fingertips met and leaned forward on his elbows. "Now, what do you know of the ones who've tried hacking into it?"

"Someone has actually tried it?" Roxas replied, dumbfounded.

This time Axel was the one answering him.

"Rox, that's why he came after _you_: you're a key wielder, a code cracking prodigy. There have been others like you before and those were the ones to either protect or try to crack open the KH. Sora was the last who tried – and just like the ones before him, he failed. Do you know what that means?"

Roxas stared at Axel in silence as images of being swallowed up by darkness flashed before his eyes.

"It means that if you even as much as try to crack the KH security, you'll have to succeed all the way through or lose yourself trying," Xemnas cut in and observed Roxas' reactions with cold eyes. "Meaning, you'll die."

"But, hang on, I never said anything about me wanting to do it!" Roxas objected as soon as the information had sunk in. He stared with wide eyed fear at both of the other men.

"Neither did Sora," Axel mumbled and looked back at him, his emerald green eyes meeting Roxas', sending out a silent message of a fear that responded to his own.

"What are you saying? That I'll go on a suicide mission against my own will? Not likely!" Roxas suddenly stood up from his chair, agitated by the whole situation and frustrated from the feeling of helplessness that was creeping up on him.

However, the fast movement caused a rush of nausea to overrun him and before he knew how he'd got there, he was lying in Axel's arms, looking up at his concerned face.

"Take it easy, buddy," he said softly and helped him back into his own chair. "You still have a day or so to let your body catch up with things."

Xemnas watched them with a troubled face from his side of the desk.

"What we mean is that Sora never had his mind set on KH to begin with. He even helped us protect it", Xemnas said in a low voice.

"Then what made him do such a fucked-up thing?" Roxas shouted out in growing confusion.

Xemnas took another long look at Axel, who suddenly sunk a lot deeper into his chair, his face paler than usual.

"Sora had a friend whom himself was showing promising potential to become a key wielder," Xemnas said slowly. "He showed promise of becoming the greatest of them all, even out-doing Sora."

Roxas felt a chill run down his spine. This sounded way too familiar to be comfortable.

"What happened?" he asked hesitatingly, not sure if he wanted to know.

Xemnas looked at him as if he was already doomed.

"Sora was a very simple, but strong soul. He did what he thought was right, no matter what others told him, and most of the time it was a good thing. He also had a very strong sense of friendship and was prepared to do just about anything, if he thought it could help a friend".

Xemnas paused for a moment, letting the meaning of what he'd said sink in before he continued.

"Riku had a strong mind of his own. Unfortunately, he was more easily persuaded by alternative truths and was weak for the promise of power. A man named Ansem made Riku an offer that he accepted without thinking through the consequences. In exchange for lending Ansem his knowledge of our security business and what he knew about the defences of the KH, Ansem promised Riku the power of one who have the keys to the KH. In short, Riku never fully saw what Ansem meant to do."

Xemnas leaned back in his chair and let his hands land on its armrests.

"Riku was used as a shield. Ansem found a way to extract his mind and separate it from his body. When doing this, he had full control over Riku, letting him take all the power of the blows dealt out by the defences around the Heart while Ansem himself could sit on a safe spot and hack his way through the walls using Riku's coded self to do so. Once Sora found out who was breaking through the security and how, he was devastated and set his mind on saving Riku while time still was."

Another pause made the silence around the three of them seem thick with soundless warnings of the future.

"Since Sora was a keybearer of full ranking, a keymaster if you like, he had a greater chance of making it through the Heart's defences without getting hurt, than Riku – or for that matter, Ansem – had. What Sora did was to seek out Ansem and give him an offer that would set Riku free and still give Ansem what he wanted. So as soon as he was sure of Riku's safety, Sora put himself in the position of breaking the KH walls and he was successful beyond even his own hopes. However, when one wall remained, someone pulled the plug connecting Sora's mind with his body. The result was that Sora, no longer able to manipulate the codes surrounding him, was devoured by the system's anti-breakage program and his code was deleted."

"But who...?" Roxas started to ask, but cut himself short as he realised that he'd already been given the answer.

"All sources point at Riku being the one who pulled the plug, and thus killing his friend who'd risked his life for him," Xemnas answered him.

"No way..."

Roxas had trouble believing this, but he knew it was the only logical solution. But why kill Sora? And what did this have to do with himself?

"Now, I guess you're wondering how all of this can make me so certain of you somehow trying to abide to Diz's wishes, am I right?" Xemnas asked mildly.

Roxas nodded slowly.

"It's because you have so much in common with Sora; a skill beyond what can be taught by another, a strong mind and heart, and most importantly; I suspect you now also have his memories."

Roxas flinched as Xemnas' eyes locked with his.

"What...? How...? Roxas stuttered as he tried to find out if what he said was true, and if so, how he could have known anything about it.

"But, even if I have all that," Roxas said once he found his voice again, " Diz doesn't have the same hold on me as Ansem had on Sora!"

Xemnas closed his eyes as he took a deep breath.

When he opened his eyes again, he directed their cold glare towards Axel.

"No, at least not yet," he said slowly. "Not yet, but I'm afraid he will get it, sooner or later."


	10. 9 Cloudy memories

**Chapter 9: Cloudy memories**

"What did he mean by _that_?" Roxas asked Axel as they walked through the corridor of the dormitory floor some minutes later.

Axel kept his eyes straight forward.

"What did he mean by what?" he asked tonelessly.

Roxas felt an urge to smack him in the face for being so stiff all of a sudden, but he kept the urge down and inhaled slowly.

" I mean that thing about Diz getting a hold on me that would make me do something as stupid as trying to hack into the KH!"

Axel's face remained emotionless and his eyes were still focusing on what was in front of them.

"What makes you so sure he _won't_ be able to do it?" Axel asked two steps later.

"Are you serious?" Roxas burst out and took a hold on Axel's sleeve, stopping him in the midst of a step and forcing him to look at him. "First off I have no _fucking_ clue as to how I'll be able to even start cracking the first safetyline of codes surrounding that thing, without getting my ass kicked! Secondly, I'm _not_ Sora! Why can't you just get that into your brains!"

Roxas was getting more than aggravated over this; he was starting to feel straight on mad from the frustration caused by all these questions without answers that were circling around inside his mind.

Axel blinked and focused his eyes on Roxas, really looking at him for the first time since they'd left Xemnas' office.

"Rox," he said in a low voice. The one word was filled with so much emotion that Roxas nearly held his breath in fear of doing something that would break the fragile balance kept between keeping up face and crying.

Axel was deeply troubled by something and had been so since Xemnas started to talk about Sora's fate.

Roxas swallowed hard as he waited cautiously for what might come.

"Don't you get it already?" Axel continued.

"Get what?"Roxas replied gently. "What am I supposed to get? Tell me!"

For a moment it was as if a shadow suddenly passed across Axel's face and Roxas felt a sudden sting in his chest.

"You really can't see it? You don't remember?"

Axel's voice was weak and hushed close to a whisper. The ache it created in the blonde's chest almost put him in a panic. But he couldn't find anything in his memory to help him end this painful expression in his friend's face.

The confusion he felt was written all over Roxas' face, his sapphire eyes wide open and his eyebrows and mouth forming a worried, almost scared expression.

Axel breathed in deeply.

He'd never thought it would hurt this much.

"I really thought you'd remember it after you said that line when you woke up..." he mumbled, more to himself than to Roxas.

The blond was at his limit of how much pressure his mind could take.

"Axel, please, tell me what it is I'm missing here..." he begged, renewed his grip on Axel's sleeve and grabbed a hold on the other one as well, as if to keep him from running away. "Please? I can't take much more of this! If I'm hurting you... if I've said something wrong..."

At this, Axel stared at him and slowly shook his head.

"No, Rox, it's not that, don't ever think that!"

"But what is it then? Why are you acting like this?"

To his utter embarrassment, Roxas felt a tear release itself from the corner of his right eye.

Axel reached out and with his thumb he dried away the tear from his cheek.

Slowly, careful not to fright him, Axel pulled Roxas closer to him and closed his arms tightly, protectively, around him, letting one hand hold on to the back of his head, fingers caressing the soft golden spikes of hair.

Roxas drew a shivering breath, then closed his eyes and responded to the embrace with putting his own arms around Axel in turn, while he let his tears flow freely. He could feel Axel's chin touch the top of his head and the gentle brushing of his lips over the hair.

"Oh, gods, Rox, what am I going to do with you?" he mumbled softly.

Roxas didn't say anything, finally feeling at peace he didn't want the stillness of the moment to be interrupted.

They stood holding each other like that for minutes, neither one of them willing to let go of the other.

"Axel?" Roxas mumbled as his tears had dried out.

"Hm?" Axel let go of his head so that he could look up at him.

"What is it then?" Roxas finished his question, reminding Axel that ha hadn't given him an answer.

Axel sighed.

"Really Rox, are you a bit daft?"

Before Roxas could comment on this, Axel took his face between his hands, leaned in closer and touched his lips to Roxas' in a brief kiss.

Roxas felt a wave of emotions wash over him at the unexpected gesture. Surprise, excitement, nervousness, confusion and sudden clarity. All of it resulting in a rose on his cheeks and an inabitlity to decide whether or not to like what was happening.

Axel backed away just enough to see Roxas' reaction and gave him a sad smile.

"This is why you're in danger, Rox," he said softly. "Because I love you, and Diz knows it. He can use that against us both and it was proved when I neglected my duties to this organization in my search for a way to save you".

Roxas blinked.

"You... you did that... for me?"

Axel let out a short laugh.

"Come to think of it, I might even have broken some rules to do so," he replied.

Suddenly Roxas remembered something Axel had said and felt a bit embarrassed to ask, but since he simply needed to know the answer, he did it anyway.

"Urm, Axel... You asked if I didn't remember... did you mean this? Did we... do we...Do_ I_ feel the same as you?"

Axel's momentarily lit up face was once more clouded.

"If the answer to that question isn't obvious, Roxas, then it's no."

"But..."

"You used to, if that's what you mean."

Axel slowly broke the embrace.

"You don't have to force yourself to remember everything in one instant, Roxas. Just take your time and when or if you ever do feel like it, I'll be there waiting for you, ok?"

Roxas could only nod shortly, feeling like he'd lost something precious, but without being able to remember what it was.

The turbulence inside him had him wondering whether or not he could really trust his own body and mind.

Axel helped him back to his room in silence and left without any further surprises thrown at Roxas.

As he laid down on the small bed and sleep was making an intrusion on his mind, Roxas suddenly had a distinct sensation of being afraid to fall asleep. But he barely had time to think about it, before he was sound asleep, his body and mind worn out by spending the day up-right and in conversation.


	11. 10 Firewall down

**Chapter 10: Firewall down**

"Having bad dreams?" Larxene asked gleefully.

Roxas nodded and walked up to his computer.

"Wanna' share?"

Roxas looked at her with disgust.

Being the only woman of the team, one would think she'd be the caring one. Instead she was more or less addicted to the misery of others and enjoyed watching someone other than herself make mistakes or get hurt.

If it hadn't been for her skills with the machines and her technical genius when it came to building new useful inventions (like the first version of their VR-unit), she'd probably been kicked out of the organization a long time ago.

Even Marluxia and Vexen were nice and thoughtful compared to her.

Roxas shook his head in answer to her plea and turned his back to her as the screen lit up.

It had been a week since he woke up from whatever comatose state he'd been in, and the old routine had already started to settle again. Roxas' memory was getting restored by and by, but there still were a number of things missing.

Not the coding part though.

He'd only had to sit down by his old computer to feel attuned and as he'd started up the programs one by one, he'd felt thrilled to be doing it again.

The only set-back these past days, had been his inability to sleep through the entirety of the night.

The reason was a returning dream of people he hadn't met, a dream always ending with himself being devoured by en evil liquid darkness as he saw the world around him disappear.

He always woke up with the feeling of not being able to breathe.

Another thing that had been bothering him was Axel's absence. The redhead had been off on missions outside of the Oblivion Mansion the past week and Roxas hated to admit it, but he missed him.

As the screen started to shimmer in blue and green, Roxas focused his attention on the data given him in the form of scrambled codes made up by numbers, letters and various symbols. His job was to unscramble and interpret those codes and then pass them on to either Vexen for further analysis, or to Marluxia for counter developing.

Roxas didn't quite remember for how long he'd been doing this, but it had been a not so insignificant number of years since he'd first heard of the organization. At least it felt like he'd spent the major part of his young life working for them. In reality it couldn't have been much more than five years or so. He'd been about thirteen when he'd gotten the offer to try out for the job.

What he _did_ know, though, was that he'd never gone through the trouble of finding out anything about his precursors on the position, or anything about the organization's history, for that matter. All he'd cared about was that he'd gotten a job that he'd dreamed of having ever since first setting his eyes upon a computer.

He'd simply never felt the need to know about those details.

Until now.

There was something odd about Sora's story, a couple of things that just didn't seem to fit. One of those things included Riku and the way he was supposed to have killed his best friend, as if he hadn't cared at all about him.

Another thing was Ansem and why he was so obsessed with getting into the Kingdom Hearts that he'd sacrifice others' lives to do so.

A thin line formed on Roxas' forehead as he deciphered a string of code. It had become common knowledge that the only way for anyone to as much as start trying to take on the armour surrounding the Heart, was to use a VR-link in order to "see" the "environment" and at the same time be able to operate the keys in the actual reality.

Sora had obviously known how to do that, as had Ansem. Only, Ansem had managed to play puppeteer with someone else working as his eyes, shield and weapons.

None knew how he'd done it though.

Somehow Diz had managed to half-way copy what Ansem had done to Riku. The difference laid in how Diz had managed to codify Roxas' mind, store it in a digital chamber and dress it up in Sora's remaining memories, aided by a program that was supposed to have been delted. He'd even done it so efficiently that it had taken the best code-crackers in the known world about two years to find him.

There just seemed to be too many odd ends that didn't add up, but the main trouble was to make sense of Riku's supposed cold hearted betrayal.

"Someone's up early."

Roxas blinked and turned around to see who'd talked.

The pink shoulder length hair glowed oddly in the light from the computer screens at work.

Marluxia, vice president of the organization and head of the mission planning and code generating, slowly stalked across the room to stand by Roxas' chair.

"So, are you developing an identity of a workaholic, or could it be you're not sleeping well?" he asked in a silky smooth voice, something oily creeping into the pronunciation of the words.

"Oh, he's got bad dreams, the poor baby," Larxene commented from where she was lying on her back beneath the main operation table, tools and wires in her hands.

Marluxia grinned widely, the striking image of a demon smelling blood, and patted Roxas on the head in a jesting fashion.

"Aawww, someone seems to be missing his teddy bear, am I right?" he said with a voice dripping of sadistic pleasure and acted sympathy. "You know, if you ever feel the need of company, I'm more than willing to help," he added, eyes suddenly lit up with something looking very much like hunger.

Roxas roughly shoved away the gloved hand and at the same time pushed his toes to the floor, making his chair slid away a couple of meters while he looked at the amused VP with both disgust and slight confusion.

"What the hell do you mean by that?" Roxas spat out as calmly as he could manage.

Marluxia laughed. The sound was more like a hushed giggle, reminiscent of the sound of fragile glass being slowly crushed in a hand.

"Oh, my, temper, temper," he said in a smile and swept a pink stray strand of hair away from his face. "How silly of me, but you see I had forgotten that you're supposed to not remember anything. I guess that the fact of you being able to work just like before sort of made the whole deal slip my mind. Forgive me." Marluxia's grin told a whole different story.

Larxene poked her blonde head out from underneath the operation table, eyes glimmering, but staying quiet, satisfied by just watching the bully do his thing.

Roxas didn't like Marluxia one bit. The flamboyant VP was nothing more than a guy drunk with power who wanted to place other people under his boots.

"Well, as a matter of fact, I _don't_ remember everything yet," Roxas said, frustration and annoyance clear in his voice as he stared at Marluxia. "And if you think that this is something funny, then tell me what it is I'm supposed to remember or just shut the hell up!"

"Wo- hoo..." Larxene mumbled with growing interest as Marluxia's face turned a bright red with simmering anger when the pink-haired VP took in the insultingly disrespectful reply.

"Look now, punk; just because you're some god blessed code cracker it doesn't mean you can do as you like around here!" he spit out at Roxas, the voice agitated, but his posture intact. "You need to remind yourself who ranks higher than yourself and pay due respect. All I was doing, was asking you a simple question and offering you some comfort, and here you bite back at me as if I'd put a knife to your throat!"

Roxas snorted and bit off the answer coming in mind before he had a chance to utter it. Pissing Marluxia off wasn't a very good thing, so he figured he had to swallow his pride for a moment and play along.

As calmly and emotionless as he could muster, he said;

"Ah, don't mind me. I've been losing too much sleep lately. My mouth has a life of its own sometimes."

Marluxia seemed to have called his bluff, but felt better none the less, since it meant he'd won the fight for the moment.

"Your apology is accepted, but only because I'm feeling kind today," Marluxia said and stepped a bit closer to Roxas. The blonde did all he could in order not to flinch as the VP bent down and put a hand on his shoulder.

"And just to show you how kind I am, I'll let you in on a secret."

The whisper was smooth and just above silence, making Larxene annoyed as she tried her best to overhear the words without any success.

"Xemnas only wants you here because he thinks that you can do what Sora, and Terra before him, managed to do. He wants to hack the Kingdom Heart and you're going to be the key."

Roxas' eyes widened in fear for this absurdness to be true.

"But then again," Marluxia said in a more audible voice, "that's what he believes. I, on the other hand, don't quite agree with those high thoughts about you."

He turned to leave, but stopped and gave Roxas a look over his shoulder.

"Oh, and I almost forgot, your dear redheaded clown isn't coming back here for a while, so stop bothering to wait for his return. My offer still stands though," he said with a smile and winked at him before he left the room.

_What did he mean by that?_ Roxas thought as the message was sinking in.

"Now that was something new," Larxene said. The sound of deep thought in her voice surprised Roxas enough to look her way.

The woman's eyebrows were drawn together and her eyes focused on something out of sight.

"So you haven't heard about it either, then?" Roxas asked, hoping to get at least one more clue to the strange announcement.

Larxene slowly shook her head, for a moment forgetful of being her usual cold and distant self.

"I've noticed that Axel's been a whole lot more absent than usual for an outdoors missions duty, but to say he won't be back..." Larxene mumbled, a shadow of slight confusion on her face.

"That's bad, right?" Roxas dared asking her.

"It insinuates either treason or a case of gone missing..." she answered, her face still troubled and her voice filled with what sounded strangely much like actual concern for Axel.

"But Axel would never..." Roxas started, but stopped himself as he came to think about the full meaning of what Larxene had said.

"Wait a minute, are you telling me Marluxia just said that he plans to..."

Larxene seemed to finally catch up with who she was talking and shook her head violently.

"I'm not saying anything other than that whatever he's up to, it sounds strange", she said defiantly.

"But Axel's in trouble," Roxas concluded.

Larxene didn't answer, but the way she looked at him before she returned to her wires, was sending a chill down Roxas' spine.

Her eyes had told him to be very careful with what he said.

Marluxia may be a bully, but he was a dangerous enemy none the less and to accuse him of treason... Roxas didn't want to think about it, but once the idea had come to him, it was hard to get rid of.

Why would Marluxia do such a thing? Who was he going to conspire against; the entire organization, or just Xemnas?

What purpose did he have to even insinuate such a thing to Roxas?

The questions kept buzzing in his mind as he turned back to sit in front of his screen. For the first time, as far as he could remember, the strings of codes mingling on the screen was incomprehensible to him.

Suddenly he remembered the main messages Marluxia had given him; that Xemnas intended to use him the same way Ansem had used Sora, and that Axel was for some reason "missing"...

Roxas almost heard the click as the pieces of information given him suddenly hooked onto each others' ends.

He gasped from the insight this brought him and in an instant he rushed to his feet and headed for the door.


	12. 11 Research

**Chapter 11: Research **

"Where're you going in such a hurry all of a sudden?" Larxene called out and looked at him with curiosity written all over her face.

"I just need to check something," Roxas said over his shoulder and left before she had a chance to ask another question.

Roxas ran through the bright white corridors of the large building, panting hard from the effort. His body may have recovered pretty fast from the coma, but he still was in a lousy shape. The stairs were an even greater trial, but he forced himself to keep up the speed, continuously going over the details in his mind and hoping with all of his heart that his conclusions were wrong.

Exhausted and with his throat sore from the heavy breathing, Roxas finally stopped and hammered his fist against the number eight bedroom door, which belonged to Axel.

When there was no answer from the other side, Roxas' heart shrunk to the size of a pea, before he told himself that Axel not being in his room at this particular time of the morning didn't prove that he was missing or...

Roxas pushed the thought away and rushed back to the stairs. Taking two steps or more at a time, he moved downwards almost as fast as if he'd not used the stairs at all. Gravity was on his side though, and luckily he didn't fall over as he rushed down. He kept going past the computer central and got himself to the stairs leading further down in the building.

He was aiming for the cellar level, where he'd find the library and the archives.

If his calculations were correct, Zexion would have just gotten down there for the day's work.

Just like he'd thought, the small blue haired young man had just opened up the doors to get inside.

"Zexion, wait!" Roxas called out as he ran the remaining distance between them.

Zexion turned around with a start and was too surprised by Roxas' presence to even get angry with him for scaring him.

Roxas tried his best to catch his breath and bent over, leaning his hands onto his knees for support in order to keep upright.

"I... need to... to talk... with you... about S... Sora and... Riku... and that... Ansem guy..." Roxas breathed out in short puffs of strained sound, the air cutting through his throat like sandpaper.

Zexion looked at him with a dawning curiosity.

"What do you want to know about them and why? None of you technical know-hows usually pay attention what so ever to these books and files that I care for. Why the sudden interest in history?"

Roxas looked at him as he tried to figure out whether or not this guy was making fun of him.

"I just..." Roxas was still panting and tried his best to make his voice come out steady and clear. " I just need to know some... details. Like... why Riku pulled the plug on Sora and... why there's supposed to be some connection between me and him."

Now the librarian was starting to show real interest, his eyes awake and wide open as his mind went through all the memorized data concerning the subject.

"Come inside the library with me then," he said coldly with a short nod and turned around to continue through the door he'd been holding up.

Roxas straightened himself out and stumbled after him into the old library. As they got inside, Zexion closed the door behind them before he set off between the rows upon rows of bookshelves that filled the large and dusky lit area.

Afraid to lose sight of the librarian, Roxas rushed after him in a slight jog, eyes locked on the dark blue hair as they got deeper into the library. Seeing the countless volumes of books, that in some places shared their space with external hard drives, CD- or DVD-records and other digital storage devices, made Roxas for the first time wonder about for how long the organization had existed and been operating in the dark. Just as he was about to ask Zexion about this, the librarian stopped him, holding out a hand to keep him at a distance that he preferred.

When Roxas stopped on the spot, Zexion stepped up to the shelf left to them and took out a grey external hard drive, slightly swept the dust off it and went over to a computer standing on top of a table just big enough to fit the machine, a mouse on a mouse-mat and the external hard drive on the side of it. Beneath the table the stationary hard drive was placed, already humming with electricity.

Zexion plugged in the memory device and turned to Roxas while it started up a program for reading the material on it.

"Now, I haven't looked into these files for a long time, so I'm going to have to read through some parts to refresh my memory," Zexion said calmly. His curiosity towards Roxas' use for the requested information was apparent in his face and voice. "Is there something else you'd like to know, while I'm at it?"

Roxas nodded.

"That program for... memory replacement? The Na- something..."

Zexion slightly raised one eyebrow as he looked at him.

"I'm guessing you mean the NAMINÉ, right?"

Roxas' face lit up.

"Yes! That's the one! Do you know anything about it? Like what it was used for and why it was shut down..."

Zexion nodded and started to walk down the row of shelves again.

"Stay where you are, or I'll make sure you'll never get out of here," he called out to Roxas over his shoulder, before disappearing behind one of the shelves.

Roxas did as he was told, not because he seriously considered the threat as anything else but a mean way of joking, but because he was almost certain that he would actually get lost if he moved more than two steps to the side.

Zexion was back with him in a matter of minutes, carrying a thin folder in his hands and a troubled expression in his face.

"Is something wrong?" Roxas asked as he reached him.

Zexion snorted.

"Someone's been down here without my permission. The entire hardware storage in that apartment is a _mess_ and I can't for the life of me find the NAMINÉ software _or_ hardware..." Zexion stopped himself, but realized, by the look on Roxas' face, that he'd said too much.

"You've kept the program intact? But... Xemnas said it should have been deleted..."

Zexion sighed his surrender.

"It _should_ had been that way, yes, but it never _was_ deleted, obviously, just taken out of use and stored down here in case it could come in handy some time."

Roxas looked at Zexion with the doubt obvious in his questioning face.

"Come in handy? Who decided that? I mean, Xemnas thought it destroyed..."

"Marluxia made the call to keep it intact, but I'm the one who took care of it and made sure that it wouldn't be known about."

"Well, obviously someone knows," Roxas commented with a nod towards the shelves in the direction from which Zexion had come from. "Do you happen to know what was in those files and programming that would be, let's say, worth stealing?"

Zexion's eyebrows went upwards.

"Well, now that I come to think about it... The last person to be exposed to the NAMINÉ was Sora. I guess his memories must still be intact within the data for the last session..."

Roxas felt a cold ball of ice forming in his stomach. This was rapidly turning into a very uncomfortable situation.

"I think you're right in that assumption," he said, his feelings towards it all sneaking into his voice.

Zexion looked at him with obvious interest and a hint of suspicion.

"How come?"

"Because for some reason I woke up from that coma with his memories mixed with my own."

Now Zexion was surprised and it showed in his entire being that it was information that he found vital.

"Why haven't you told me about this before?" he asked in a high-pitched voice.

"I told Xemnas and Axel about it the same day I woke up, and since Marluxia for some reason has learned about it, I guessed everybody knew it already, OK?" Roxas bit back fiercly. "If you want to jump someone for keeping information from you, I suggest you go to them!"

Zexion shook his head.

"Never mind, it's not that important," he said tensely. "But the fact that the NAMINÉ is still operational and that the one controlling it most likely is Diz... now _that_ is troublesome."

Roxas hated this constant game of asking the right questions in order to get the answer he wanted, but he also knew that Zexion was one of those personalities that worked that way. He simply knew too much to be able to extract the vital information in a question and then give the answer searched for. Instead, he took every question literally and didn't bother too much about filling in blanks, unless the person wanting the information had patience enough to drag it out of him.

"What is it that this program does, more precisely? I still haven't got a good explanation for that, or why it is such a big deal that it still works," Roxas asked and tried not to show his exasperation. "How does it work?"

Zexion opened the folder he'd been keeping in his hands until now and turned it for Roxas to look at the contents.

"It was designed for the purpose of saving important information, but the main use for it turned out to become an act of extracting and re-shaping a person's memory. In Sora's case, which was the last time the program was used, it was done to the extent of almost erasing his entire person. We never found out what had gone wrong in that session, but never the less it was decided that the NAMINÉ was too dangerous to use."

Now Roxas had to cut in before Zexion went on.

"Wait, you almost erased his entire memory? But..."

"...how did he manage to get back to normal?" Zexion finished his question. "We managed to realize what was happening before it was all too late and stopped the process before it was completed. That way we could back track the process and re-create the memories that were taken, or at least most parts of them. Some things did get completely lost though, but nothing important."

Roxas thought about it all for a moment.

"So, why was he exposed to it in the first place?"

Zexion looked away, his visible eye focusing on something Roxas couldn't see.

"Xemnas ordered it done to prevent a possible disaster once he learned that Sora was looking for Riku, who'd mysteriously disappeared one week before. We all figured that Riku had gone over to one of our enemies and none of us wanted Sora to join them as well due to the persuasion that a friend can conjure up. So when Xemnas ordered for Sora's memory to be altered, it was merely in order to keep him out of trouble. It was meant for the program to take away every connection Sora had to Riku, but somehow it sort of backfired and instead of picking out and erasing a certain detail in his memory, the NAMINÉ started to take away and re-shape every single memory he'd ever made".

Roxas sifted through the papers in the folder as he listened.

Suddenly his attention was entirely drawn to a photo kept with the other material. It showed a young woman with dark red hair, dressed in a pastel pink and black businesswoman outfit, the blue- and on the photo almost violet -eyes glittering as she smiled at the camera.

Roxas knew that face.

Or rather, _Sora_ knew it.

Roxas himself had never seen her before in his life.

Zexion noticed his fixation with the photo and took a look at it.

"Ah, she's quite beautiful, isn't she?"

Roxas didn't answer.

"It's the woman behind the designing of the program..." Zexion started to tell him, but Roxas interrupted him.

"It's Kairi."

Zexion blinked.

"You've seen her before?"

Roxas shook his head slowly and put a finger on his forehead.

"_I_ haven't. But Sora knew her very well it seems."

"Yes, that's correct," Zexion said hesitatingly. "You actually _do_ have Sora's memories?"

"Yup. Most of it, at least," Roxas said with a grimace. "The trouble is, I can't make any sense of it, can't pick and choose what to remember and when." He paused for a moment. "And some of _his_ memories seems to have blocked out parts of my own memories. _And_, as if that wasn't enough, they keep giving me some really horrific nightmares. It's more than annoying, to say the least."

Right then, the computer made a sound telling them that the data of the hard drive plugged in was finally available.

"Seriously, Zexion, you should update that machine..." Roxas noted, but Zexion only snorted at the comment as he opened the desired files.

"Just because it's slow it doesn't mean it isn't good."

"Being really old doesn't make it good either," Roxas shot back under his breath.

Zexion muttered something unintelligible, his eyes focused on the screen.

"What files did you want?" he asked a moment later.

Roxas moved in closer to the screen.

"Sora, Riku and, if it's possible, anything you can find on Ansem."

"Well," Zexion said and let Roxas be in control of the mouse so he could read the files opened," I can give you Sora and Riku, but Ansem is a tough one. I'll have to check with the catalogue on my office computer to see if there even is a separate file on him."

"I'll stay here and read, OK?" Roxas said without taking his eyes off the screen.

"Fine..." Zexion sighed and started to walk away, but turned back around after just a few steps. "I just came to think of something... Why do you want this information now?"

Roxas swallowed a lump of worry that was building up in his throat.

"Because for some reason, Marluxia found it funny to inform me of what he mean is Xemnas' true reason for keeping me in the organization and the fact that I've never heard of Sora before sort of made me worried that he might have told me the truth..."

Despite the silence that followed on this, Roxas didn't turn to look at Zexion. He didn't need to.

"What did he say?" the librarian asked a minute later.

"That Xemnas intend to use me for the same purpose that Diz had my mind remodelled and coded, that he wants me to open the Kingdom Heart."

Another pause of silence passed.

On the screen Roxas found himself staring at two photos. One of the photos was showing a young, attractive man with shoulder length silver hair and sharply turquoise eyes. He was dressed in a black hooded sweater and purple pants of the baggy kind. His eyes seemed to drill their way into the beholder and he sported a slight smile on his lips that told of mischief in the making.

The other photo was of a slightly younger guy with brownish dark blond hair arranged in a wild spikey fashion. The bright blue eyes looking out from behind long bangs were glittering with an optimism that matched his welcoming smile. He was wearing a short sleeved, hooded black jacket with white brims, a dark blue shirt underneath it and wide black pants.

Roxas had gotten goose-bumps all over as he saw the photos.

He knew the faces and the information they packed up in his mind was enough for him to wish he hadn't come to the library.

Zexion took a deep breath somewhere from behind his back.

"If he wants the Kingdom Heart, why did he wait this long before putting his plan into work?"

Roxas had to admit that Zexion had a point, but he still wasn't entirely convinced that Marluxia's words had been nothing but a prank.

Zexion moved closer as he noticed how Roxas was staring on the photos on the screen.

"Is something wrong?"

"It's Riku and Sora," Roxas said slowly. "I know their faces, I've seen them in my dreams... But Sora's memories... they don't fit the written information at all..."

Zexion put a hand on Roxas' chin and forced him to look at him instead of the screen.

"What do you mean, 'they don't fit'?"


	13. 12 Memories and facts

**Chapter 12: Memories and facts**

"_What do you mean, 'they don't fit'?"_

Roxas blinked a couple of times in order to see clearly in the sudden absence of the screen light.

Zexion looked at him with a slightly panicked expression in his eyes, panic of knowing he'd missed out on information. In a way, it almost would have seemed funny, hadn't it been for the not so funny context.

"Well, for one, Sora and Riku were friends long before they got involved with the organization, but that file says that they met only after Sora had been with the organization for a year," Roxas clarified to him. " And Riku was never able to reach the level of a keyholder, but he still operated as one with the help of some corrupt code he'd got hold of, probably through Ansem. Sora knew about it, but he never said anything, because he didn't want Riku to be expelled from the organization. He wanted him close, because he..." Roxas had to make a pause as he tried to find the words to explain the information he'd got from the memories in his head. "They cared for eachother and had promised to be together, to help eachother out, no matter what happened..."

Roxas slowly sunk down on his knees as Zexion watched him with growing concern. Tears were showing in Roxas' eyes as he went on.

"Sora saved Riku's life for the same reason Axel tried to find me: because he couldn't imagine living without him. And he made him promise... He made Riku promise... before he entered the hack mode, he made him promise... not to let him get through the last wall if he made it that far. He told him to not let Ansem get a hold of the Kingdom Heart, no matter the cost..."

Roxas couldn't breathe properly and without success he tried to stop the tears from falling and his lips to shudder as the memory of someone else's nightmareish experiences kept repeating itself over and over behind his eyelids.

And all the time Zexion stood helpless, watching the legitimate heir of the most skilled code cracker in history break down over a memory triggered by two innocent photographs.

After a while Roxas felt Zexion's small hand on his shoulder.

"Roxas... what is it that you're not telling me?"

Roxas looked up at Zexion with red lined eyes showing a true pain of the heart.

He slowly sucked in a deep breath to stabilize his voice.

"I came down here because I didn't know where else to turn for some sort of information... Zexion, please tell me that it's nothing to worry about! I know I'm just overreacting..."

Zexion hushed at him, slightly uncomfortable with the whole situation.

"What is it that you shouldn't worry about? That Xemnas will try to use you to overtake the most guarded source of information in the world? That your memories aren't yours?"

Roxas forced back a growing panic in his chest.

"That Axel hasn't come back here since he left one week ago."

Zexion stepped back in surprise. Apparently there were a lot of information that he hadn't been given lately.

"What are you talking about? Is he missing? Why haven't I been told...? " he suddenly stopped himself as a realisation suddenly struck him full on. "Wait, who else knows about this?"

Roxas thought for a moment before he answered.

"Let's see... Larxene knows and Marluxia... and I think Lexaeus said something two days ago about Axel finally keeping his nose to himself or something. I don't know about Vexen or the others. Xemnas should know something though, since he's the one who sent him out on the mission and I bet Saix is starting to wonder about his absence as well..."

Zexion stared at him for a moment while he took in the facts of what Roxas told him.

"Well if Axel's missing, we're in some deep shit," he finally mumbled and Roxas looked at him in confusion.

"Why do you say that?"

Zexion stared at him as if he'd just told him that he couldn't read.

"Are you really telling me you haven't even once noticed the fact that Axel is the head of the defence here, that without him all our security is at risk and our firewall down for the counting?"

Roxas actually felt a bit stupid for not having given those things a closer thought. But now that he was, he suddenly felt it as if a cold hand squeezed at his heart, as something finally clicked in his mind.

"Zexion, if someone wanted to hack the KH, wouldn't it be easiest to do so through a protecting unit while the anti-virus system and all other defences are down, leaving a number of walls as fragile as a one-digit password?"

"Well, doesn't that question answer itself?" Zexion said, then froze as he understood. "Oh..." he said slowly.

"We, the organization, have through Sora's actions, and the key keepers before him, been protecting parts of the KH's main security coding. If someone knows that the system's firewalls are down, they'd take their chance to attack," Roxas continued and got back up on his feet. "And this attempt would work even better if that person operated from one of the protecting unit's own computers."

Zexion's eyes went wide with the final conclusion.

"Are you telling me that someone inside the organization is trying to betray the entire meaning of our existence in order to get through to the Heart?"

Roxas grabbed his arm and stared him straight in the eyes.

"They're already doing it! Now show me out of here before it's too late to do something about it!"

Zexion was too upset by the whole impact of the conspiracy theory laid out to him to do anything else than silently obey the demand. Together they started running down the rows of bookshelves towards the entrance, Roxas not even a footstep behind Zexion.

"What are you planning to do?" Zexion asked when they turned around a corner and could spot the entrance doors.

"I may be a code breaker, but I'm also quite good at building codes as well as cracking them. I'll make something up," Roxas replied, his face set in a stern expression of determination.

"Any way I can help?

Roxas felt a bit odd at the thought of being the one to order the older librarian what to do, but since he'd asked for it...

"Do you think you could find any useful information on Ansem or Diz in this place? Because that would be very helpful."

Zexion nodded and slowed down to a stop by the doors. As he opened them to let Roxas out, he turned to the blonde with a grave expression.

"I will let the others know about this. Xemnas, Demyx... and, do you think Larxene is safe?"

Roxas nodded hastily as he went through the opening and started running through the corridor towards the stairs.

Roxas nearly collided with Marluxia as he turned around the last corner before the door leading to the computer central.

"Woah, take it easy, kid!" the pink haired man reprimanded him and grabbed a hold on his shirt collar before he got too far away.

Roxas halted instantly as the pressure on his throat pulled him backwards and almost brought him out of his balance.

"Marluxia, let me go! I need to do something..."

"Always such a rush," Marluxia said with a smirk. "It can wait. Xemnas is looking for you, so you better come with me."

Marluxia didn't wait for Roxas to oblige to this, he simply started pulling him along by his arm.

"Hey, wait, you can't just drag me around like this!" Roxas tried to object while flailing violently with his arms to get free from Marluxia's iron grip.

"Oh, but I _can_, Roxas, and I'm going to get you over to Xemnas' office whether you want to or not." He stopped in front of a small key pad placed in the wall and pressed the button for the private elevator leading directly to the room of the head of the organization. There was a beep and Marluxia punched in a four digit code and suddenly the wall in front of them opened up to reveal the hidden transportation device. Roxas was pushed inside and quickly followed by Marluxia sealing off the escape route. The latter pushed the up button and the elevator's doors closed.

About five seconds later, the doors opened and Marluxia shoved Roxas out into the same office where he'd seen Xemnas directly after he'd awakened from the coma.

Roxas grimaced as he thought of the unfairness that he'd been forced to use the stairs that last time he visited, when there obviously had been a way in which he could've gotten there faster and be a whole lot less exhausted by the transportation.

"Take it easy, Marluxia," Xemnas' voice boomed softly towards them from the direction of the desk. Roxas turned to look, but couldn't see him.

"Of course, sir," Marluxia said in a soft chirping voice, his entire face suddenly cracking up in a big, strained smile.

Roxas shuddered at the false act of flatter. Not only was Marluxia a bully and a perv, but he added to that list of abilities with being a big kiss-up.

"Leave me with him for a moment will you?" Xemnas' voice came once again.

Marluxia never stopped smiling, he just bowed and backed his way back into the elevator and went back down, leaving Roxas alone in the big room with the voice of the organization's charismatic leader.

Roxas got himself seated in the same chair that he'd sat in at his last visit and looked about, searching the room for the source of the voice.

"You won't find me by looking at everything else," Xemnas said with the hint of a laughter in his voice.

Roxas turned his eyes towards the sound and finally spotted him standing tight next to one of the big, heavy black drapes hanging from the window tops. He was wearing a long black leather coat. The moment before the hood on it had been up, concealing him in the shadows. Now it was pulled back and the white hair stood out from the otherwise black spot in which he stood.

"I've called you here today because I mean to tell you something you should know about Ansem."

"About Ansem?" Roxas repeated, making sure he'd heard right.

Xemnas nodded slowly and turned to face him, his eyes fixating on Roxas'.

"Ansem was a fool, a dangerous fool, but still a fool," Xemnas started. "He tried to join the organization when he was about your age."

Roxas hadn't known this, and the surprise must have shown in his face, because suddenly Xemnas' mouth widened in an amused smile.

"He was talented, no talk about it. But he was also unstable and easily drawn to do things for the sake of taking on a challenge – like hacking into places you're supposed to help keep shut."

While Xemnas talked, Roxas started to wonder about why he'd truly called for him – to teach him a piece of history or to just delay him from intervening with the highly possible hacking of the Kingdom Heart. As soon as the thought hit him, though, he shoved it away as ridiculous.

Xemnas' smile grew wider as he noticed Roxas' impatient shifting in the chair.

"In short, his application to join was, after a test period, declined, but he had managed to get some friends inside the walls before he left. You might be wondering why I'm telling you this, right?"

Roxas gave him a short nod for an answer.

Xemnas' eyes gleamed in the dim light.

"It's important to know your enemy, Roxas. His goals, dreams, wishes... his strengths and his weaknesses. Ansem's weakness was his short thinking and his impatience. His strength, on the other hand, was his will to succeed and a cunning mind."

"So, what does this have to do with Diz?" Roxas asked with a growing feeling of missing something important. "Are you saying I should try to find out his strengths and weaknesses?"

Xemnas' smile faltered for a moment.

"Roxas, have you given your own strengths and weaknesses a thought? Because I'm sure that it's more or less obvious to anyone watching you."

"Really? So, what are they then?" Roxas replied defiantly, proving that he hadn't thought about it at all himself and getting even more aware of the feeling that he was missing something very important.

The pleased expression on Xemnas' face wasn't what Roxas had expected and the Cheshire grin that was back on his lips sent a chill of ill-boding premonition through Roxas' spine.

"I'm guessing you've noticed the absence of our firewall programmer," Xemnas said, his voice smooth as cream.

A pinch in Roxas' chest told him that this meeting was going in the wrong direction and he started to feel even more anxious than before to leave the room.

"To be frank with you, Roxas, you probably have more strengths than weaknesses, but the one weakness you _do _have seems to be far greater than your strength."

This made Roxas flinch and a rage built up in him.

"What do you mean by that? Here I'm doing my best to just remember who _I_ am, and you demand that I change a part of me that I have no control over? Why did you really want to see me, sir? Because, frankly, I need to be elsewhere and if you're going to waste my time talking about my faults, I'm so leaving this room."

Xemnas laughed.

"Really now? Haven't you figured it out already? The greatest code cracker of our time tells me he still haven't figured out how to find the key to a code he's been served for a week!"

Roxas grimaced with dislike at the changed attitude. He wasn't used to being laughed at like this, to be mocked for not being able to do something.

"If it's so simple, then how come I don't know what the hell you're talking about?" Roxas spit out and got on his feet, ready to leave the room.

Xemnas took a few steps and was now within an arm's reach of Roxas.

The black leather coat creaked with Xemnas' every motion, following the shape of his body tightly. This new outfit was starting to get on Roxas' nerves. It made him think of nightmares he wished never to re-visit. Dreams of drowning in darkness...

"My dear key bearer, I suggest you take a moment to think about what you know about this entire situation," Xemnas said slowly. "Sometimes the best of codes, the ones that are the hardest to crack, are the ones that are easier to crack than expected..."

Roxas mumbled slowly to himself as he did what he'd been told to do and started to place out all the pieces of the puzzle given to him.

It all circled around the want to get inside the Kingdom Heart.

The start was when Sora was accepted into the organization. Then, Riku was contacted by someone with the power to make his progress through the organization go faster. This someone had to be a person highly ranked, with access to key-codes hidden from most people.

That person, Roxas had guessed to be someone who got Riku in touch with Ansem, a not too bad hacker himself.

Ansem tricks Riku into start breaking into the Heart and for some reason leaves enough traces behind him for Sora to find them, free Riku and take his place. But before that, Roxas reminded himself, Sora had been through a session with the NAMINÉ that had gone wrong.

This session had been ordered by Xemnas, saved by Marluxia and stored by Zexion. Someone who knew about the session then stole the data from it, to use it on Roxas in order to blend his mind and heart with that of Sora's and, by doing so, get the ultimate key bearer to use as a wall breaker against the security systems surrounding the Heart.

Now _that_ someone was a strange man called Diz, the same man who possibly wants to repeat Ansem's coup in a refined version of the original plan.

Axel had managed to break the blending before completion, leaving Roxas half way in-between his own memories and those belonging to Sora. After this, Axel had gone missing on a mission Xemnas sent him on...

Roxas shuffled the pieces around in his mind, trying to find a pattern to lock and from that pattern build up the main frame through which he'd be able to enter, and finally crack open, the code hidden within those pieces.

Sora, Riku, Roxas, Axel, Ansem, Xemnas, Diz…

Suddenly there was a light turned on in the back of his mind and Roxas inhaled loudly as the pieces were finally falling into place. He almost felt like hitting himself in the head for not having seen it all earlier.

Xemnas stepped closer.

"Axel figured it out way faster, you know," he said calmly and put a leather clad hand on Roxas' shoulder.

Roxas shuddered at the touch.

"How… how did you do it?" Roxas asked as the final piece was linked to the puzzle.


	14. 13 Ultimatum

**Chapter 13: Ultimatum**

"To hide in plain sight is the best way to remain un-detected," the reply came in a voice that reminded Roxas of the one belonging to a man with a bandage-covered face… Diz.

Now that Roxas thought about it, Xemnas and Diz had never been seen together during Diz's time within the organization.

"So, you played around with your name, added a letter and scrambled the rest, changed the way you looked and acted and just played along for, what, ten years?" Roxas said, staring at his hands lying in his lap. "Waiting for the next key bearer to show up as the perfect tool for your plan. You made up yet another personality and spied on me to make sure I was cut for the part, and then put the whole thing into active mode by attacking me before I figured out who you were."

He looked up at Xemnas, who didn't change his expression at all.

"You planned to wake me up yourself when the memory transfer was completed, but Axel found me faster than you'd expected. You called us up here to come and see you as soon as possible after I woke up, to see what we both knew and to find out just how much of the memory transfer that had been successful…That's when you decided to silence Axel, before he figured it all out and blew your cover, before you could put the next part of your plan into motion", Roxas continued, his eyes narrowing. "In dealing with him, you also found a natural excuse for the defense to come to a low point, both within the organization and in the programs protecting the Heart. Now all you need is for someone to lock up the remaining walls, and you believe you can convince me to do it for the sake of saving Axel. Have I missed something?"

Xemnas smiled viciously at him.

"Oh my, the code breaker finally made it. Well, I do believe you've only missed out on one little thing."

Roxas dared himself to turn his eyes to the golden ones of his enemy. What he saw in the man's face was nothing but the satisfaction and self praise of a person who knew he would win.

Disgusted by it, Roxas gritted his teeth and stood up from the chair, but kept looking straight at him nonetheless.

"And that is the simple fact that I will force you to do this if you don't do it freely. I simply _prefer_ you do it on your own accord, since it's a lot easier to do it that way," Xemnas continued and gave Roxas' shoulder a harder squeeze, making the blonde quench.

"What have you done to Axel? Where is he?" Roxas asked, his voice pregnant with his mixed feelings of humiliation, guilt, worry and rage.

"Oh, don't worry, he's alive," Xemnas said in a chuckle. "I've simply put his mind on a task he can't ignore, which sort of helps keeping him off my back. Let's go see him, shall we?"

Xemnas didn't wait for an answer, but forcefully shoved Roxas backwards into one of the bookcases that covered the walls of the room.

A stinging, piercing pain shot through his head as it hit a sharp-edged shelf and he cried out as he fell to the floor together with a number of books that rained over him.

The head man of the organization was like a shadow in the gloom, dark and blurry at the edges as Roxas looked at him through half closed eyelids as he tried to think through the pain. What had gone wrong and when?

Xemnas made a movement above him and the bookcase silently slid to the side, revealing a secret passage.

Roxas tried to get up on his feet, but Xemnas just grabbed him by the neck of his shirt collar and roughly dragged him into the darkness of the new passage.

When he finally managed to see clearly again, Roxas' mind was instantly filled with memories he didn't want.

The passage was familiar to him, but he hadn't been there before. The memory he had belonged to Sora, but what Sora knew in the past and what Roxas was experiencing in the present was scrambled up into one blurry haze, together with the pain in Roxas' head. He was still being half dragged, half stumbling down the stone stairs.

At the end of the spiral staircase, Roxas was for a few minutes having some trouble with remembering just who he really was. This was instantly cured, however, the very moment he spotted the third person present in the room which they'd entered.

"Axel!" he called out with a voice of mixed relief and worry .

The red-haired man was placed in a chair similar to that in a dentist's office, only this one was equipped with restraints and a mass of technical wires that were connected to the man placed in it.

It was a sight for nightmares to come, the scenery lit up by a number of turned on screens of various sizes on the left side wall. The pale blue and eerie green light made the shadows sharp at the edges, looking like horrible monsters clinging onto everything with long, sharp claws, made to look alive by the flicker of the screens.

Roxas felt that he was released and instantly he shot forward on his still unstable legs, desperate to see if his friend was still breathing as Xemnas had promised.

Axel's eyes were closed and his body was next to motionless, but he was breathing.

Putting a shivering hand on Axel's cheek, Roxas noted it's coolness and pulled away slowly, turning to look at Xemnas.

"What are you doing to him?"

Xemnas only nodded towards the screen wall and Roxas followed his eyes to the source of the flickering lights.

The code strings mingled all over the wall in a familiar pattern, sometimes in blue, sometimes in green, always shifting and changing places. That one look was enough for him to understand that he was looking at the one thing he had been hoping to not ever see.

There, in the midst of what he recognized to be the defensive virus system surrounding the outer rim of the Kingdom Heart, was a single string of consistent coding that he for some reason had recognized, a part of his own lost memory jumping forward to get through the wall of intruding memories.

"Take him out of there!" he screamed in a panic stricken voice as he turned back to Xemnas.

"Why would I?" Xemnas said with a purring voice, smiling a wolf's grin, certain of his triumph.

Roxas swallowed and shut his eyes hard, clenching his fists as he made the decision.

Those defensive viruses were called "the heartless", and they had only one thing programmed into their meaning of existence: attack the minds of those who dared to enter their reign, and delete them. Once fixed on a target, the heartless were relentless, multiplying in an endless loop until the attacked caved in. When that happen, they take the attacker's self awareness and soul, also known in hacker surroundings as "the heart" of the hacker, making the remains in the digital world turn into one of them, while the body out in the real world was slowly dying away, forever lost. This was a horrible, but effective process, leaving the Kingdom Heart un-touched up to this day.

Sora had somehow got himself past the horde of heartless, all the way through to their inner circle of protection, and now Roxas was almost certain that he knew just how he'd done it, a knowledge that could save Axel's life…

Roxas looked up at Xemnas, his icy blue eyes wishing to pierce the other's golden.

"Because if you do, I'll hack the Heart for you. I'll get you through all the way, 'cause I know now how Sora did it. But I won't do it unless I know that Axel will be safe. And I can tell you this; Sora's way of progress won't work unless I can do it all on my own accord."

The last part was true; Roxas knew that.

Sora's success against the heartless had been his heart's strength and his ability to operate freely, to improvise and go on instinct.

Xemnas slowly clapped his gloved hands at the offer.

"Good boy," he said with a silky smooth voice. "I have to admit that I was a bit worried to begin with. Sora was way easier to catch."

Not moving his eyes from Xemnas, Roxas crossed his arms over his chest, feeling a strange urge to growl at his opponent, but forced it down.

"Now, I will free him, since you ask so nicely, but I can only do so if someone on the inside pushes him out of the shadows. Otherwise, my try to bring his mind back to his body will be like either pulling the plug on him, or splitting his mind in two."

Gritting his teeth with frustration, Roxas unfolded his arms.

"How will I know you'll keep your word?"

Xemnas only smiled approvingly at his skepticism.

"I will let him send you a message himself through outside sources."

Roxas didn't want to do it, but he had to accept this, simply because there was no other choice.

He nodded.

"Plug me in, then."

Xemnas directed him to a chair similar to that which Axel was placed in, standing only three or four steps away from the other.

Once all the wiring was in place, Roxas turned his head to give Axel's close to lifeless body a last look.

The feeling rising in his chest told him what he should have known already and with a heavy sigh of regret, he placed his head into the extended arms of the headrest, designed to keep his head in place while logged in.

"Do it," he said and as Xemnas flicked the switch on the control board, Roxas' eyes closed and he awoke in a different world.


	15. 14 Parting

**Chapter 14: Parting**

Axel looked around himself as he started to feel desperate.

There was no end on the stream of heartless coming at him.

He'd managed to clear a wide space for a few minutes, but they were slowly crawling back towards him, regrouping and multiplying.

He formed another ball of fire and threw it at the cluster nearest to him, watched them flee or disintegrate, only to be replaced by another mass, bigger than the first one.

What really bugged him was that there seemed to be no way out.

No matter how far he backed away from his entering-position, no matter how clearly he showed signs of retreat, the blasted things kept coming at him, intent on annihilating the intruder.

Not for the first time he cursed his stupidity in trusting Xemnas and also not for the first time this made him think of Roxas and the position all of this would put him in.

He threw out a tail of the protective fire to enclose himself in a circle that would hopefully keep the horde of slithering shadows at bay for at least a little while.

The first line of heartless that came in contact with his safety measure were instantly put out of existence and he dared a smile. But already the next line of viruses managed to take a few steps inside the fire before vanishing and Axel's heart sank.

The next line took out the fire as they passed through it and he had to once more collect the energy to set off a blast that cleared the nearest area enough for him to keep off the on-coming army that soon followed.

He was starting to feel weak and exhausted.

Every ounce of strength he had, he put into fighting off the black mass out to get him and he'd been doing it since he got here, waking up to the sound of feet whispering against the invisible floor of ever shifting colors.

He didn't dare think of for how long he'd really been here, because he couldn't tell anything of it, but that it had been a very long time.

He wished to sleep, to rest, to eat.

He wished to be with Roxas, to make sure he was alright.

But most of all, he wished for it all to end.

Axel knew his only chance to survive was through outer influence, and since the only way for that to happen probably meant that Roxas gave in to Xemnas, he tried not to believe in the facts.

He most certainly did _not_ want Roxas in here.

Axel threw away a pitiful fireball and readied himself to start fighting with his bare hands.

The fact that Roxas hadn't showed up yet probably meant that he either hadn't been addressed by Xemnas yet, or that he hadn't and wouldn't give in to his demands.

As much as it hurt him to think of it, Axel hoped for the last of these alternatives.

Axel roared as he threw a heartless off his chest.

They were too many for him, but he simply wouldn't give up and let them take him that easily, so he fought on as more of them managed to get a hold of him.

Just when he felt his last remaining powers fade away, the darkness surrounding him suddenly exploded with light and every last particle of the shadows vanished with no sight of the cavalierly of duplicates coming to take their place.

The entire vast space of this digital world in shifting shapes and colors was now empty as far as his eyes could see.

Not entirely empty though.

Axel blinked away the white spots that were dancing before his eyes after the blinding light had faded.

"Are you alright?"

Axel's heart skipped a beat as he tried to decide whether he should feel good or bad about hearing that particular voice behind him.

Slowly he turned his head to face the blond young man he loved.

Roxas stood about three or four steps away from him, dressed in a black full length hooded leather coat. His sapphire eyes were sharp with concentration, but the worry that could be read in them was deep.

Axel pulled himself up on his feet and noticed the weapon in Roxa's hand. It was the size of a sword, but shaped like a silver key with a golden grip.

He almost fell back down as he recognized the weapon. He'd heard a description of it before.

A keyblade.

And not just any keyblade, but the Kingdom Key.

"Rox…" was all he could press forth over his lips.

The pain and sadness that filled that one word made Roxas let go of the self preserving control he'd been using on his emotions and with no more than two flying steps he was holding Axel in his arms, pressing himself tightly to him, afraid to let go and lose him.

Axel stood stunned for a moment, before he let his own arms enclose Roxas in a responding embrace.

"I'm so sorry, axel! I didn't know… I was so darn _stupid_!" Roxas said, his face against Axel's chest.

Axel let his fingers run through the blond spikes of hair on Roxas' head and shushed at him.

"Don't apologize, Rox. I suspected him earlier and hesitated to say anything before I was sure on my suspicions being right. If someone's a fool here, then it's me."

"But I gave in to him, Axel," Roxas objected weakly. "I just couldn't leave you here to the heartless!"

Axel put a finger to his chin and forced his face upwards for him to meet his eyes.

"Look at me, Roxas. I don't blame you for any of this, OK? Right now I'm just too happy to see you again, alive. I've been so worried for you…"

Suddenly Roxas reached up, let his hands rest on Axel's shoulders and closed his lips over the other's.

At first, Axel was too surprised by the act to do anything, but soon he relaxed, lifted Roxas' shorter slender body from the ground and responded the kiss, deepening it with all the recent held back emotions and longing.

He tasted salt as tears from Roxas' eyes found their way to their lips and he slowly forced himself to open his eyes and pull away.

"What's wrong Roxas?"

Roxas quickly dried his eyes with the back of his hands and inhaled deeply.

"It's just… so damned unfair," he said with a shaky voice.

"What is?"

"That just when I finally remember everything, when I finally know what I feel, I'll have to leave you."

Axel went cold at those words and tried to bring him back into his arms again, but roxas was faster than him.

In an instant, the keyblade was back in his hand and directed at Axel's chest.

"What are you…" Axel started to ask, not knowing what to say or think.

"I'm sorry Axel, but I _have_ to do this. Forgive me."

The key started to glow and Axel felt his heart shrink in his chest.

"I love you," Roxas said, the tears back in his eyes.

Axel was about to say something to stop him, but before he could do so, the blast of light hit him full on and he woke up with a gasp for air, trying to pull himself out of the chair that held him, before he realized where he was and forced himself to calm down.

"Welcome back Axel. Did you have a nice trip?"

Xemnas stood before him in a black coat, similar to the one that Roxas had been wearing, and smiled his chesshire grin.

Axel wanted to spit in his face, but his mouth was too dry. Instead he leaned back into the chair and stared at him in silent rage while he tried to force his voice back into function.

Xemnas chuckled at him and stepped up to his side.

"You seem to be a bit upset," Xemnas mused. "I thought you would like to get out of there, or was I wrong?"

Axel grit his teeth, his eyes almost glowing with the rage he felt.

"You're a back-stabbing shit-pile of crap, you know that?" he muttered with a raspy voice.

Xemnas only laughed at this.

"And you're just as good with words as ever, I hear. Now don't you want to have a look at your sweet hero? He's right next to you, really," he said and pointed to a place over at Axel's right side.

Axel involuntarily turned his head to where the man pointed, only to see Roxas in the same horrifying lifeless state that he'd been in during the past two years before Axel had manged to save him. He could almost feel something breaking inside of him as he noticed the wires connected to the young blond, keeping him in touch with the computers in front of them.

"What did you tell him to make him do it?" Axel asked, fearing he already knew the answer.

Xemnas raised his eyebrows in an pretended gesture of surprise.

"What, he didn't tell you?" he said and walked over to Roxas. He leaned down over him and placed a gloved hand on his cheek, caressing his face.

"Your brave little savior simply wanted you out of there in one piece."

"So you threatened to unplug me if he didn't go through to the Heart after he got me out, am I right?"

"Something like it, yes," Xemnas smiled. "Which reminds me that I promised to let him hear from you before he started."

Xemnas walked back to Axel's chair and flicked on a switch on the side of it.

"Now you're on the chat-line. Say hi, will you?"

Axel grunted his displeasure with the situation, but did as he was told, not seeing any other choice.

He moved his fingers rhythmically over the touch keys on the ends of his armrests as he typed a message, using his personal coding to certify his identity to Roxas.

*[I'm awake, and as far as it goes, alive and breathing. Be careful, Rox. The lord of darkness isn't one to trust with the power of a grand heart. I will do my best to get you out alive. I love you. With all my heart. / Axel.]*


	16. 15 Breaking down barriers

**Chapter 15: Breaking down barriers**

Roxas heard the message as a voice out of the empty air. It was Axel's voice, the coding making the words come through a medium that Roxas' memories would respond to in the correct way.

Roxas nodded as the message ended.

Ansem was a fool.

Xemnas was a tad smarter and Diz had been dangerous in his anonymity. All of them were the same person, he knew that now, but this person himself was a split personality. Ansem's hunger for power brought forth the cunning patience of Xemnas and this in turn created the practical observer and actor that was Diz.

Roxas started walking and with a swift movement of the keyblade, a portal opened to let him through to the other side of the vast space of nothingness that this place was.

He looked about and reached out his arm carrying the key, turned it in the air as if putting it into a lock and twisted it just a bit to the right.

A clicking sound was heard and another portal was opened.

Roxas stepped through it and by doing so, he had passed through the first wall of protection.

The first out of thirteen.

As he entered the second zone, the greeting committee of heartless soldiers came towards him the very moment he put his foot on the ground.

Roxas raised the key and gripped it with both hands.

"Let the fun begin then. Game on!" he said, calling out the last words as he raised the keyblade over his head in a pattern of motions that created a swirl of shimmering light around him.

The end of the keyblade started to glow with white light and just when the first heartless reached within his parameter, Roxas once more directed the key to be in front of him.

The heartless jumped.

Fully loaded with power, the key fired off another beam of light like the one he'd used before to save Axel in the first zone.

Within the blink of an eye, the second zone creatures were history.

He turned the key on the spot where it was, and another clicking told him that the second wall was down, another opening appearing where he had the tip of his keyblade.

_Now that was easy_, Roxas thought warily to himself. _Too easy_.

The procedure was the same at the third level: load, aim, shoot and loot.

As he entered the fourth zone, leading to the fifth wall, he finally met with some solid confront.

He fought them off easy enough, but he noticed that they didn't die as easily as the ones before them.

When he found the keyhole of the sixth wall, he had to try twice before it was unlocked.

"So this is how far the organization's firewall reaches…" he mumbled to himself as he heard the click of the lock.

From now on it would actually be a challenge to get through.

"Five done, eight more to go," he said with a sigh and stepped through the portal to the sixth level and the seventh wall.

He barely had the time to react before a flash of electricity whipped past him, missing his right cheek by a hair.

Roxas raised the keyblade in a counter attack and caught the next bolt with the blade.

It bounced off to the side and hit something in the pitch black darkness that caught fire, lighting up a small part of the surroundings.

Tensing his muscles, Roxas waited for the next blow while trying to figure out a way to get past this enemy.

Two more electrical surges sent off to the sides gave Roxas two more sources of light, which proved to be enough to let him see parts of his opponent, still hiding in the shadows to keep it's movements unseen and unpredictable.

The next blow Roxas managed to redirect like a boomerang, and his surprised attacker found itself hit by its own weapon, squealing with pain as it fell to the ground. But Roxas knew better than to think it defeated so easily, so he performed a combination of movements with the keyblade, representing a string of hack codes on the keyboard of his armrests in the real world. He ended it with a blow of blue light thundering down on the heartless, pulverizing the black and yellow shape until nothing remained of it.

Roxas swung the keyblade over his head and heard a loud click as the seventh wall lock opened.

"That's new…" he mumbled as he entered into the next level.

As soon as he heard the opening close behind him he felt like hitting himself for having thought for one moment that this was going to be just as easy for the rest of the way.

"Welcome to dinner, the wolf said to the sheep," he muttered, remembering a story he'd liked hearing as a child.

This was a flycatcher system: the guarding program lures the intruder inside, only to lock it in, cage it, with a stronger lock, before it slowly broke down whatever had landed in the trap.

Roxas heard a rumbling growl from inside the walls of shifting colors and felt a slight panic rising in his chest.

This thing sounded BIG, as in BIG trouble.

He tightened his grip around the keyblade and closed his eyes in concentration. He was going to need some help to deal with this thing.

_Sora, please tell me you know how to beat this thing,_ he thought in a try to trigger the other keywielder's memories in his mind.

With a weight that made the ground tremble, the gigantic beast stepped out of the farthest wall and Roxas felt fear tickling his legs, caressing his mind gently with needle-covered gloves and squeezing his chest hard.

This thing was enormous and it looked just about undefeatable, with a heavy muscular structure and armor as thick as a dictionary.

Roxas gulped and squeezed the grip of the keyblade with sweaty hands.

_It's only a bunch of numbers and letters on a screen, I can do this_, he thought to himself in a try to make the fear in his body go away.

Then the beast roared and locked its eyes onto his, glowing yellow orbs meeting icy blue.

"Oh, I'm _so_ screwed…" he said as the monster of a heartless started to walk towards him.


	17. Chapter 16 Safety measures

**Chapter 16: Safety measures**

"He needs help, you bastard!" Axel yelled out, his worried eyes directed towards the codes on the screens, not for one second willing to let his eyes off the small string that was Roxas.

Xemnas lifted an eyebrow, seemingly untouched by the information the codes gave them.

"You can't just leave him alone against that thing!" Axel continued, panic rising as he helplessly had to sit and watch.

"Really now, Axel, you of all should have more faith in the boy, don't you think?" Xemnas mused with a chuckle, his face calm as if he knew something Axel didn't.

Axel gritted his teeth with held back fury. He had very strong faith in Roxas' abilities, but he also knew they had a limit. Everyone had a limit.

"Hold on, Rox…" he mumbled as he wished hard for a positive turn. "Hold on and survive… please survive…"

* * *

><p>Zexion gasped when he finally managed to get the second file started and opened on the computer.<p>

The photo that had popped up was hazy and a little bit out of focus, but he recognized the face on it, despite a change of hairstyle and an expression that he hadn't thought the man capable of producing.

The white haired man on the screen was without any doubt a younger version of Xemnas.

The only problem with this was that the file it had sprung from was about Ansem.

"No way…" he breathed out and tried to find something that told him he was wrong, but he wasn't.

When the realization dawned upon him he reacted by starting to run.

On light steps he flew over the floor, turning in and out of the different aisles in between the bookcases as he found the fastest route to the doors of the library.

Roxas had gone to warn Xemnas about treason from the inside of the organization, but if Xemnas in fact was the same person as Ansem, which meant the treason came from the leader himself! This in turn put Roxas in grave danger and Zexion could only hope that the key holder had somehow been delayed on his way to Xemnas, so that he could warn him in time.

Zexion had just got up the stairs to the first floor, when he nearly collided with Marluxia, who grabbed a hold of his arm to stop him.

As he was pulled back, Zexion almost heard the pop as he felt his arm's joints glide apart.

"Ouch!" Zexion yelled out with pain and stared vengefully at the pink-haired man.

"What's the rush, hm?" Marluxia asked him in a purr.

Zexion knew better than to trust him, especially after what Roxas had told him about their last meeting.

"It's none of your business, now let me go!" Zexion grunted and pulled at his arm to get free, resulting in another pop and a new grimace crossed his face.

"Now, is that really a way to talk to a superior, Zexion?" Marluxia purred on.

"What do you want?" Zexion asked in a fiery voice.

Marluxia laughed.

"Me? Oh, I want a lot of things. The question is, what _you_ want, my dear librarian. Maybe you want to know where to find the keybearer, hm? Aren't yu just dying to tell him something?"

Zexion couldn't hide his surprise and swore out loud as Marluxia grinned at him with glee.

"My, my, my… I seem to have a talent for this," he said and twisted Zexion's arm in a move that made the smaller man scream out as his arm with a final confirmation was dislocated.

"Too bad that you've decided to take a stand on the wrong side of this thing. I actually liked you," Marluxia continued without being bothered by Zexion's screaming.

In a swift motion of his free hand, Marluxia presented a sharp, bent dagger that he placed against Zexion's throat.

"Good-bye, Zexion. Nice to have known you."

Just as he was about to slit the librarian's throat, Marluxia's hand was pulled away and Zexion fell to the floor when his harasser turned around to face the newcomer.

"I won't ask you why or what you think you're doing, but you're _not_ getting away with this Marluxia!" Lexaeus' deep voice filled the air as he stared at the suddenly frightened vice president, whose hand he was squeezing.

"He's trying to overthrow the organization… He's cooperating with Ansem…" Zexion managed to say while he tried to get back on his feet, ignoring the pain in his limp arm.

"Ansem? _The_ Ansem?" Lexaeus looked at them both in disbelief, but when Marluxia tried to swing his dagger at him to get away, Lexaeus only made a movement of his free arm and the pink haired VP yelped as his arm broke and the dagger fell to the floor.

"I've got no more time to explain it further; we need to find Roxas!" Zexion said as he finally stood up straight again.

The giant of a man that was one of the organization's anti-virus programmers raised his eyebrows in confusion, completely ignoring the whimpers and thrusts coming from the man he still had a strong grip on.

"Roxas? Why?"

"Because I think Ansem will try using him to get to the Kingdom Heart!" Zexion explained and turned to Marluxia. "Where is he?"

Marluxia glared at him and wasn't going to answer, but as Lexaeus started to twist his still unbroken right arm, the VP gave in to their demand.

"Alright! Xemnas got him already! They're in a hidden room that you can enter through a bookcase in his office."

Lexaeus looked even more confused, but when Zexion started for the elevator, he figured he'd get to know more when the time came for it and followed, dragging the objecting VP along with him.

"Why do you even bother?" Marluxia whined childishly, cradling his broken arm in a try not to make it hurt any more than it already did. "You're already too late to stop him anyway!"

Zexion stepped inside the elevator and Lexaeus followed with his prisoner, none of them paying any attention what so ever to Marluxia.

When they got out of the elevator and started up the steps to the office, Marluxia, who was starting to feel a bit nauseous from the pain his broken left arm was starting to give him, decided it best to be a bit more cooperative and led them to the secret elevator.

Entering Xemnas' office, Lexaeus pushed Marluxia down into one of the armchairs and used one of the curtain wraps to tie him down to it.

"Now you're going to tell us where this hidden passage is, or you will find yourself missing some important parts, do you understand me?" Lexaeus said in a smooth voice, bending down to look the pink haired man in the eyes.

Marluxia stared at the giant with a hate mixed fear and nodded.

* * *

><p>Roxas hurried to roll away as soon as he hit the ground and by doing so escaped, by a second, the threat of being flattened by the monster's foot.<p>

He struggled to breathe properly while forcing himself to remember that what happened wasn't really happening to his physical body, despite how real the cuts and the bruising felt.

"It's all in my mind," he repeated under his breath.

Another thing that he hoped was in his mind, was the way out of this fight.

He gripped the keyblade in his unharmed hand, while he tried to think away the pain of his nearly broken fingers on the other.

Come on Sora – give me something, _anything_! he thought desperately as the monster turned around to face him again.

Holding the blade in his left hand felt odd, but he would have to do what he could with it for a while until the ache in his right hand fingers faded a bit.

Just as he readied himself for the upcoming attack, he got a clear image of another keyblade – one that was more suited for the task and therefore more powerful. A specialized code key.

In the blink of an eye, the Kingdom Key he was holding gave off a flash of bright light and as it faded, a new key was there in its place.

The body was longer and split in two intertwining ones, forming a star-like head. The golden handles of the Kingdom Key had been replaced with two white wings and the grip itself felt smooth and soft like silk or lace, instead of the rough grip-enhancing pattern that covered the metal grip of his former weapon.

The Oathkeeper gleamed in pearly white and a slight shift of pale blue, tipped with light yellow and shell pink at the prongs of the key head.

Roxas breathed in deeply to steady himself when the beast in front of him started to gallop towards him.

In the last moment, Roxas shifted the blade into his right hand, trying not to mind the pain.

He jumped up in the air, just as his opponent lowered its head to impale him on the nose-horn.

Raising the Oathkeeper above his head in mid air, Roxas made a spinning motion of the keyblade and in the instant he landed on the beast's large skull, he brought down his weapon hard on the broad neck.

The blow shook Roxas' shoulders as it hit the hard armor, but for some reason this spot proved to be the enemy's weakness.

Roaring with pain the monster stumbled and then disintegrated so fast that Roxas didn't even get the time to jump off it. He fell to the ground and landed in a roll, got to his feet in one swift motion and brought up the Oathkeeper in front of him in case there was another enemy taking the fallen one's place.

But as no new threat came forth as he stood there breathing hard, his arms shaking from the effort to just hold his weapon up, Roxas lowered his guard and sunk down on his knees, exhausted.

Roxas beheld his new weapon with a grateful expression in his eyes.

"Thanks for the help, Sora," he breathed out weakly.

Another memory suddenly came to his attention and a bit doubtful as to what might happen if he followed the directions of it, Roxas raised the keyblade with his still shaking arms to hold it over his head in a double grip.

He closed his eyes to focus on the task and then called out the command in a clear voice.

"Heal!"

A bright light instantly poured out of the weapon, enclosing him for a moment, before it seeped into his body and vanished.

Warm energy quickly spread all through his tired and wounded body and even the tears in his clothing were closed.

Roxas slowly moved his fingers, hands, arms, feet and legs as he tried them all in a growing feeling of amazement.

"Well _that_ was useful…" he whispered to himself and got up on his feet.

He raised the Oathkeeper up, performed a series of movements and ended it by forcing the key head down into the ground.

A loud click confirmed the lock being opened and Roxas sent another grateful thought to Sora, before he jumped into the opening that would take him to the next level.

* * *

><p>"See, I told you he would make it," Xemnas said, the smile still in place. "he's managed to get half-way through in…" he looked at the timekeeper on one of the screens, "…about one hour's time. That's even faster than Sora. You should be proud."<p>

Axel didn't say anything. He knew how close a call this had been. Had it not been for that healing, Roxas would have collapsed right then and there and died as the wall would have closed over him when the protection he'd broken down kicked back into life.

Sora's memories were probably the one reason that Roxas was still breathing, Axel figured anxiously. He dared to part his eyes from their intensive observation of the coded settings in which Roxas now moved, and studied the real body of the keybearer that was strapped into the other chair.

"Why are you keeping me strapped up like this?" Axel asked as he returned his attention to the screens.

Xemnas chuckled.

"I can't have you running around trying to find a way to break him out now, can I?" he said and then suddenly came up close to Axel, leaning down towards him and lowering his voice into a whisper. "Besides, I tend to learn from my mistakes. Last time I decided that the bait was harmless to let go, the fool killed both the keybearer and himself. We don't want that to happen, do we?"

Axel's eyes widened as he realized what Xemnas was talking about and Xemnas smiled as he went back to the control table.

"I didn't think so," he said in a pleased tone.

Axel muttered something incoherent and kept his eyes on the string of numbers, letters and symbols that was Roxas' digitalized mind.


	18. 17 Making progress

_Sorry about the delay... I've been a bit absentminded ever since I got my N3DS and the KH3D... And work keeps me busy inbetween... But, now here's a number of chapters for ya'! Please review and tell me what you think. /Silverspegel_

* * *

><p><strong>Making progress<strong>

"Is your arm OK, Zexion? I could try…"

"I'm _fine_," Zexion interrupted Lexaeus and kept on pulling out books from the shelves with his one still functional arm.

Marluxia grinned behind them.

"Seriously, Zexion, don't you think it would speed things up to use both hands?"

Lexaeus turned around and gave him a cold stare. Marluxia's grin faded and he looked away.

"Are you _sure_ you're not holding back on us, Marluxia?" Lexaeus asked him and the pink haired captive quickly shook his head.

"I _swear_, I don't know anything more than what I've told you! The door is supposed to open on that wall when you pull out some book. Xemnas isn't one to trust others."

"Really now?" Lexaeus said and observed him cooly. After a good time staring, Marluxia turned his face away once more and Lexaeus felt sure he'd got all the information he could out of him. The large man snorted at the prisoner and then turned back his attention to Zexion and the bookcase.

"It has to be somewhere along this height, or it would be too uncomfortable for him…" the librarian mumbled and pulled out yet another thick volume of leather bound papers without luck.

Lexaeus studied the bookshelves in silence, then stepped forward, reached up at a shelf Zexion in his shortness couldn't reach, and pulled out the only thick book on that shelf.

A low grinding was heard and the bookcase slid to the side, just enough to let a person walk through the opening this created.

Zexion looked up at Lexaeus in confusion and the taller man shrugged and showed him the title written on the back of the book he'd pulled out: _The door to light and darkness_.

It was another name for the Kingdom Heart.

Zexion grunted, feeling a bit humiliated, since the solution had been so simple.

"Sometimes I'm just lucky," Lexaeus said and put the book on top of some others in the bookcase.

"Come on now! We don't have any time to waste here," Zexion said and started down the stairs of the dark passage.

Lexaeus gave Marluxia a look that promised him another round when he returned, before he followed the blue haired librarian into the shadowed opening.

* * *

><p>Roxas spun in the air to collect on the strength that speed could add to his blow and stroke down hard on the heartless beast. It vanished in a cloud of black fumes, only to be replaced by another one coming up on Roxas from behind.<p>

He managed to escape it by a hair, taking a dive to his left side. He quickly got back on his feet, turning towards the muscular hulk of a heartless as he rose.

The keyblade was at the ready, glowing with light that shot forward towards the enemy as soon as Roxas finished the combination he'd planned to use.

The light beam hit the shield held up by the target, but Roxas had foreseen this move and had kept moving, taking another dive to slide past the beast's defenses and got back up on his feet just as the heartless lowered its shield.

The wide strike of the Oathkeeper hit the creature in the neck, and it was defeated.

Roxas dried the beginning perspiration off his forehead with a heavy sigh.

He was tired.

This fight had been going on for what seemed like forever. The heartless had been easy enough to kill, but they had been steadily multiplying themselves in a manner that hadn't allowed him even a minute's rest.

He waited a few more seconds before he felt free to relax a bit and let the keyblade be lowered.

This level was the eighth, if he had been counting them correctly. That left him five levels to get into before the Heart would be bared to him. Before Xemnas would take over his entrance code and take the control.

Roxas shuddered with the thought. He knew Xemnas could simply unplug him once he got inside, as long as he kept a link open for himself to enter through, but he didn't want to think about that possibility. He rather preferred thinking about Axel being able to prevent that sort of ending somehow. He knew this chance was slim, but as long as it was existing, he was willing to hang on to it.

Taking a deep breath, Roxas looked at his surroundings.

The world around him was still consisting of an ever shifting mass of colors, shaping a wide space seemingly without boundries. At the moment, the main colors were various shades of blue.

The key bearer sighed.

Anyone else might have missed the coding that shaped the world he was in, might not have spotted the shifting of light at a spot in the air some steps away, but he saw it clearly.

Roxas lifted his weapon and focused on what to do.

Once more he could feel the tiredness weighing down upon his limbs and he forced his shaking arms to keep up the pose. The healing spell had healed all the outer wounds and it had revived him, true, but it also took time to build up all the energy it needed to be efficient. Therefore he decided to save the spell for later, when he might need it more.

The lock wouldn't open.

Roxas stared at the Oathkeeper and realized that the key didn't fit.

He took another deep breath to calm himself, before he summoned back the Kingdom Key. But as he tried this one out, it wouldn't fit either.

Frustrated, feeling the pressure of his tight time schedule, Roxas threw the keyblade, as hard as he could muster, down on the ground and screamed out his exasperation.

"_Now what?!_" he yelled out into the vast and colorful space, but got no answer, not even an echo. "How am I supposed to open a lock without a key?" He sank down onto his knees and stared at the almost invisible keyhole above him, then turned his eyes towards the keyblade. It had bounced off the ground and landed about two steps away from where Roxas was sitting.

"Please, Sora, remember this for me! Roxas pleaded within his mind, hoping for a memory to flicker into life that would aid him in this troublesome situation.

He reached out his hand, calling for the keyblade with his mind, and it appeared in his outstretched hand a mere second later.

Roxas observed the weapon, caressed its metal with his hands, felt the weight of it as he held it out in front of himself and noticed the tingling sensation of its magical powers seeping into his arms.

"Come on Roxas, think! You produced the Kingdom Key on your own, so why shouldn't you be able to make a new key?" he mumbled to himself as he tried once more to clear his mind and find a solution.

Gripping the keyblade's hilt with both hands, Roxas closed his eyes in deep concentration. He needed a new key, so he would make one. How hard could it be?

A sliver of a memory suddenly flashed by and Roxas couldn't help but smile. Sora had helped him again, once he'd set his mind on making it on his own.

He released a surge of energy into the weapon in his hands, felt a change in the material he was holding and opened his eyes.

This blade was something else – an opposite of the Oathkeeper. It was black and heavy, instead of white and light. A chain traced the body of it and the teeth were sharp and pointy.

Roxas knew its name from Sora's memory and whispered it to himself as he took it in with his eyes.

"The Oblivion Key…"

This was the key that had locked several of the Organization's files and what had kept outsiders away from their gates in more ways than one. This… was a legend.

Roxas swung the key in his hands, getting a sense for the way it cut through the air.

This key meant _power_.

When Roxas held it out towards held it out towards the keyhole, it simply unlocked more or less on its own.

As the portal to the next level opened up in front of him, Roxas let out a low whistle. He stepped through the portal with the beginning of a grin on his lips, carrying the Oblivion Key at the ready, holding it out in front of himself.

This was starting to look quite nice…

* * *

><p>Axel stared at the screen in wonder.<p>

Just now, Roxas' coding had changed for a split second and as it went back to normal, he could see a new key in Roxas' presence.

"What the…"

Axel turned his head too look at the person who'd uttered the words, and was surprised to meet with the eyes of Zexion.

"So this is where all the extra equipment went…" Zexion continued, almost seeming hypnotized by the screens covering the wall.

"Zexion! Xemnas is…" Axel started in a try to warn the small librarian, but was interrupted by his captor, who'd just discovered the intruder himself.

"… most delighted to find you here," Xemnas finished Axel's sentence as he gave the redhead a hard whack over his head with his open hand.

Axel cursed under his breath at the humiliation of not being able to defend himself.

Zexion on the other hand calmly took his eyes off the screens and turned to face Xemnas with a cold expression in his young face.

Xemnas smiled widely. "I'm actually a bit surprised it took you this long to find this place," he said as he stepped closer to Zexion.

"Ansem," Zexion said in response, his voice heavy with disgust as he kept his eyes on the white haired man in front of him.

Now Xemnas' smile finally faded, but he kept silent, stopping in his steps.

"You're not going to succeed in this, you know that, right?" Zexion continued.

The faded smile came back on Xemnas' lips.

"Oh, really? And who will stop me? You?" Xemnas said, amusement apparent in his voice. "If you haven't noticed it, I'm way stronger than you, in so many ways." He grabbed tha shorter man's collar.

Zexion didn't even gasp, he only winced a little as the pull on the collar set his dislocated arm in movement.

Xemnas noticed this and gave the librarian a curious look.

"Hoh? Someone's been in a fight I see…"

Zexion spat at his face and directed a well-aimed kick into his opponent's lower body regions, making the surprised man lose his grip on the collar and bend forward in a try to ease the sudden pain and Zexion got loose, going for Axel's restraints.

"You little…!" Xemnas roared out and turned around to get him, when he suddenly felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and was turned back around.

Lexaeus looked down at him with a grim expression in his face.

"You know, I'm really disappointed with you," the giant of a man said in a low pitched voice.

Xemnas' face went through a series of expressions, before he settled for rage.

He broke free from Lexaeus' hand and grabbed a metal pipe that was leaning against the wall – a means of protection put there by himself in a moment of paranoia some weeks earlier – and managed to get a clear hit over Lexaeus' back, sending the suddenly unbalanced man falling forward and down on his knees onto the concrete floor.

Xemnas quickly placed himself to deal Lexaeus a second, finishing blow over his head, but as he with steady arms raised the bar into position to get the most power possible behind the blow, the weapon was pulled out of his hands in a forceful yank from behind. The unexpected weight relief unbalanced him and a slightly rough push by a hand to his back sent him falling forward.

Reacting quickly, Xemnas landed on his hands right next to the fallen Lexaeus, and got back up on his feet in no time, turning around as he rouse to meet this new opponent with rage spewing out of his flashing golden eyes.

A slender and slightly younger man stood there, observing him calmly while swinging the snatched iron bar in front of him, ready to use it, should he feel the need to. The black, white striped, long hair was gathered in a low ponytail at the neck and a black eye patch covered his right eye. A long scar reached from his left jaw and up towards the nose bridge, adding more roughness to his overall appearance.

Xigbar was one of the more invisible members of the organization and usually he didn't bother all too much about the doings of the others. He was the head of transportation, the one who made all the trips outside of the Oblivion mansion possible, both longer and shorter. He also saw to the exports and imports of goods that kept the organization running. In short, he usually kept to himself and didn't argue about anything except bad time schedules.

Now this loner was looking at his employer as if he was a pest that needed extermination.

"Xigbar! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Xemnas roared with ill hidden frustration.

"Shut up, or I'll use this," was Xigbar's chilly response, making a hint towards the bar in his hands.

"How dare you…" Xemnas growled and was about to take a step forward, but Lexaeus, who'd gotten back up on his feet, got a hold on his arms from behind and held him back.

"Take it easy now, traitor," the giant whispered into Xemnas' ear.

Xigbar actually smiled at the expression of defeat in the white haired man's face as he realized that he had lost.

"I just went by the office to get a signature for a receipt, and look what I found," Xigbar said, his voice and overall appearance telling of an ill hidden amusement at seeing the other man being treated this way.

Behind Lexaeus, Zexion had finally freed Axel from his restraints and went on to deal with waking up Roxas, when Axel suddenly reached out and stopped him, before he got close enough.

"Wait!" Axel yelled at him with a raspy voice.

"What? Are you _mad_? We need to get him out of there before it's too late!" Zexion objected and tried to free himself from Axel's hold on his good arm's sleeve.

Axel violently shook his head at this and nodded towards the screens for him to take a look.

"He's already too deep in!" Axel said and looked at Zexion with desperation and deep worry in his emerald eyes. "If you bring him out now," he continued as the librarian turned his eyes towards the screens, "the system protecting the Kingdom Heart will be momentarily strengthened and the heartless will grab on to Rox before he'll be completely logged out and that would either turn his mind into something else, beyond recognition, or it would…"

Axel couldn't say it, so he left the sentence hanging in the air, his eyes turning towards Roxas' more or less lifeless body in the chair next to him.

"It would kill him," Zexion finished the line in a low voice.


	19. 18 Discussing alternatives

**Discussing alternatives**

Axel gave Zexion a short nod in response.

"It would kill him. His only chance to get out alive and with his sanity intact, is to get through to the heart and shut down the entire defense mechanism for the time he would need to get out…"

"But he _can't_ do that!" Zexion exploded. "If the Kingdom Heart is stripped off like that, it would be hacked by a hundred crooks before the walls go up again! That would mean a complete chaos in the digital universe and a major threat to anyone who've ever used a computer!" Zexion gasped for air as he tried not to hit Axel in the head for even suggesting the deed. Axel, on the other hand, only kept looking at Roxas with a painful expression in his eyes.

"I don't care," he said, his voice filled with emotion and conviction.

Zexion took a deep breath to calm himself before he answered.

"Look, Axel, we simply can't shut down the entire defense system, not even for a period of 30 seconds. The Heart is under constant observation by both the good guys and the bad. The only reason Roxas doesn't get a tail of followers when he opens a lock is because he's using a set of time limited and shifting code keys, meaning the opening shuts behind him the moment he steps through, allowing only one person to enter. Getting out of there needs to be done the same way…"

"But the Kingdom Heart doesn't work that way!" Axel objected. "There is no door heading _out_, only _in_!

Zexion sighed.

"I know that, Axel." Zexion let his eyes wander over to Roxas and then gave Axel a cold look. "And _you_ know that not I, nor Roxas, would ever allow the Heart to be hacked by someone with a desire to use its powers."

Axel squared his jaw, but he didn't object. He knew it was true.

"If he gets all the way through, we can't save him," Zexion continued, a bit of sensitivity sneaking into his voice, the look in his eyes softening.

"But there _has_ to be a way! We can't just… just kill him!" Axel spat out in a desperate voice, his eyes filled with anxiety and fear.

Behind him, Xemnas started to laugh.

"What's so funny?" Axel roared and turned to look at the man with fury.

"This is exactly why I let someone else do the hacking," Xemnas purred. "What's the use of having all that power when you can't enjoy its benefits from the outside?"

Axel was on his feet in seconds and had his hands around Xemnas' neck before anyone had a chance to react.

"You never meant to let him out, did you?" axel growled as Lexaeus pried his hands away from the other man's neck.

Xemnas smiled back at him as soon as he had caught his breath.

"Did you really think I would? Why release a pawn you can control without endangering yourself?"

Axel was too upset to say anything. He looked at Xemnas with eyes spelling out death bu suffering, but he knew it was pointless. Xemnas was, after all, right. And so was Zexion.

Roxas was lost to them.

"So this was why Riku pulled the plug on Sora, huh?"

Axel looked up and met the one-eyed stare of Xigbar. The man's face was showing an unexpected amount of compassion.

"This was why he did it before Sora got through the last wall; to save him from being enslaved," Xigbar continued slowly.

Axel looked away and Lexaeus let him go as he made a move to go back to where Zexion was still standing, one step away from Roxas.

"He knew this before he entered, right?" Axel asked the librarian in a low and defeated voice and Zexion gave him a short nod.

"Sora's memories told him all about it," he said.

Axel looked at Roxas where he was lying in the chair.

The blonde's eyes were moving behind the closed eyelids and his fingertips were in constant movement as he clicked in the codes that took him through the digital world where his mind was locked up. Apart from this, he showed no proof of life at all, even his breaths were too shallow to be noticed from underneath his black shirt and white jacket.

"If he knew he'd be cornered… Then why did he go in?" Axel mumbled doubtfully.

"What?" Zexion asked, not sure of what Axel had been saying.

"Zexion, is it possible that Sora might have figured out a solution to the problem of getting out _without_ stripping the Heart of its defense?"

"Axel, if he'd done that, he'd still be _alive_…"

"No, wait, Zex, hear me out, OK? Sora might not have known about it until it was too late…"

"Axel, the memories Roxas got from Sora were saved _before_ he died you know…"

Axel stared at the screen. Roxas had opened the tenth wall and entered the eleventh level. He was moving fast now.

"If that's all of it, then how come Rox remembers how Sora got through the walls? It doesn't make sense…"

Xemnas snorted from where he was sitting, being tied down to a heating pipe by Lexaeus under the watch of Xigbar.

Axel turned towards the sound and looked at the man with a dawning realization.

Zexion looked at him as well and connected the dots a bit faster.

"You added the later memories as well, not just the ones NAMINÉ stored, but the memories _you_ stored as well…"

There came another snort and Xemnas gave him a look of degradation.

"You really hadn't figured that out already?" the white haired man said in a disappointed manner. "And here I was thinking you were smart…"

Zexion ignored the comment and turned his attention back towards the screens.

"So you managed to copy the process of the NAMINÉ and used it to store Sora's actions and thought while you made him hack the Heart… clever. Saving it in case something would go wrong."

Xemnas didn't answer to this, but Axel noticed a twitch of annoyance flash by in the man's face.

"Sora suspected something like that, so in order to keep the last unlocking a secret, he told Riku to pull the plug before he had entered the last level…"

Axel's eyes widened.

"Sora _told _him to do it?"

Zexion nodded his affirmative without noticing Axel's confusion.

"Roxas told me about it after I showed him the remaining NAMINÉ-files," Zexion continued while Axel tried hard to grasp the new information. "Riku never abandoned Sora as we thought, but he followed an order, or if you prefer it, kept a promise he'd made to Sora."

"That means… Sora could actually have found a way out, and now Rox can use that knowledge…" Axel said as he felt a slight touch of hope in his chest as the pieces of the puzzle fell together.

"_If_ he gets through, and _if_ Sora actually did have such a solution and _if_ it works," Zexion pointed out.

"It's a chance as good as any!" Axel said and looked the librarian in the eyes.

"Aaww, come on Zexion! It won't harm giving the guy a chance, right?" Xigbar unexpectedly joined the conversation and threw the steel bar to land on the floor with a loud clanking noise as he walked up to Axel and Zexion. "As long as the defenses stays up, nothing will happen, right?" he added.

Zexion stared at him as if he was a talking animal.

"Are you _insane_! If he reaches into the Heart, he'll change the coding and Ansem here," he made a pause to nod towards Xemnas, "will have it all saved up and usable through the wires putting Roxas' mind into the computers!"

Xigbar raised the eyebrow over his one good eye.

"But Ansem, Xemnas or whatever his real name is, won't get a chance to use it, since we'll destroy it all once Roxas is out, right?" he said calmly.

Zexion stared first at Xigbar, then Axel, shifted his eyes towards Roxas, then back at Xigbar again.

"Right?" Xigbar repeated, his face still calm and his one showing eye vivid with emotion.

Zexion sighed heavily and went over to Lexaeus.

"Fine. We'll give him a chance to try and get out," he said with a tired voice. "But if he as much as begins to shut the system down, I _will_ unplug him."

The last words were directed towards Axel. The redhead grimaced, but he didn't say anything, only nodded as a confirmation of his understanding of Zexion's demands.

"Well then," Xigbar said leisurely, "which one of you geeks wants to tell me how to understand this crapload of jibberish?" He made a nod of his head towards the codefilled screens.

Axel smirked.

"Why so interested all of a sudden?"

Xigbar shrugged.

"Call me weird, but I simply want to know why I've just aided you guys to tie up my boss," he said and made an inclination towards Xemnas.

Axel's smirk became a smile.

"Sure thing. I'll tell you all about it."


	20. 19 Hearing voices

**Hearing voices**

Roxas dried the sweat from his forehead with the back of his free hand and spied at his surroundings. He knew there should be one of the heartless left and he wasn't about to lower his guard so it could jump him while he was unprepared.

The vast space of greens and blacks was empty, the silence so overwhelming that Roxas almost imagined he could hear the sound created by his hands movements through the air.

"Oh come on! I haven't got all day!" Roxas yelled out into the nothingness.

A sudden movement seen in the corner of his eye made Roxas turn around to the left, his keyblade raised for battle. And the heartless attacked.

It was big – about two heads taller than him – and it used a magic that kept hitting Roxas even as the heartless retreated. It was airborne and had the ability to transport itself by teleport… In short, it was hard to kill and did its best to kill Roxas.

But the keybearer had already taken out four of its kind. He was tired, muscles aching from the beating as well as from the rough usage of them.

Despite being tired to his bones, Roxas raised the Oblivion key over and over, in both defense and offense. When he finally dealed the monster the killing blow, Roxas fell down on his knees as the vanishing mist of the heartless surrounded him, too tired to stand up any longer.

His arms and legs were shaking from the effort of having to be in a constant use.

Roxas let the Oblivion key momentarily shift into the Oathkeeper, since Sora's memory told him the white key was more efficient in performing the healing spell.

As the green shimmer faded, he got back up on his feet, his sore muscles recovered, but his mind still exhausted. Apparantly the spell had its limits.

The keyhole was visible as a shimmer in the air some steps away from where he was, so without further ado, he got himself closer to it, leveled the keyblade with the lock and concentrated.

The Oathkeeper shifted into the Oblivion and as Roxas turned the keyblade, the lock opened with the familiar clicking sound.

But as he stepped through the portal, Roxas felt something was missing, or rather, that something was different compared to the previous openings he'd passed through. The space surrounding him now was a swirl of white and black thorn covered stripes that constantly seemed to twist and turn together.

"Wait a minute…" Roxas mumbled to himself as the realization came to him that this was the first level he didn't recognize from Sora's memories.

The thirteenth level.

Only one more lock to open and he would be the first to ever have hacked all the way through to the Kingdom Heart.

Roxas slowly raised his keyblade into a ready position. Whatever it was that he was going to have to face on this level, he was sure it was going to take all he had to fight it.

He waited in concentrated silence, watching the swirls of the world as they moved back and forth, creating an illusion of moving him forward despite of him standing still.

After a while, Roxas lowered the keyblade and took a doubting look around himself.

Nothing.

"Come on! What is this, some kind of a test of my patience?" he burst out with annoyance clear in his voice. He waited for a little while longer in the deafening silence, but nothing happened.

With a frustrated snort, Roxas let the keyblade drop completely.

This was going nowhere.

Figuring he could at least try finding the keyhole, Roxas decided to take a look at the place. That's when he realized that he couldn't move his feet.

"What the…?"

Roxas cursed out loud for having been tricked by the program. Another curse passed his lips as he discovered that it hadn't been an illusion that he'd been slowly moving towards the center of the place.

Suddenly the ground opened up in front of him, creating a vast hole that slowly turned, creating a swirl out of the ground that was closest to it.

Roxas felt a slight panic rise in his chest as he observed how the hole slowly, but with increasing speed, grew larger as it swallowed the ground around it.

"Think, Roxas, think!" he ordered himself in a try to break the sudden brain freeze that had got to him at the sight of the hole. "There has to be a way out of this…"

_The keyblade…_

Roxas blinked.

He'd just thought he'd heard a voice…

_Use the keyblade…_

Roxas looked around himself, but found no one near him that could have been the origin of the voice.

He turned his eyes to his feet and then brought the keyblade into his vision. A moment of hesitation went by before he shrugged the doubts off his shoulders and pointed the keyblade towards his feet.

Closing his eyes, he thought "release".

With a start, Roxas fell forward as the ground let go of his shoes.

Afraid to get caught again, should he stand still for too tolng, Roxas was fast back up on his feet and started walking around the large, growing hole.

"Now what?" he mumbled as he walked.

The hole was growing and that meant the rest of the place was shrinking, leaving him with less space to move on.

It meant trouble.

"How am I supposed to get out of here?" he called out in frustration as he picked up the pace. He didn't know what would happen if he should let the hole drag him in, but he didn't want to find out either, so getting over to the other side before the road there was cut off became a very important task to him. But, no matter how fast he moved his feet, he got the feeling of not moving at all.

He tripped over his own feet and fell roughly to the ground. Forcing himself back up as quickly as possible, Roxas fought down a growing sense of despair.

"Concentrate, damn it!" he ordered himself and started walking again, afraid to stand still.

This level sure was the hardest. No visual enemy, but a perilous environment that worked like a ticking bomb. Roxas subconsciously wiped off the sweat from his forehead as he walked. He was getting nowhere and he couldn't see even a glimpse of the keyhole that should be there.

"What the hell am I supposed to do?" Roxas yelled at the silently swirling strings of black, white and grey that made out his surroundings.

Despite his efforts to keep calm, panic was starting to build up in Roxas' body, like a black slithering animal with sharp claws, making itself a nest inside his chest.

_Look up._

Roxas almost jumped at the command, but just like before, there was no one around who could have spoken.

Giving in to the only source of advice that he had, Roxas decided to do as he was told, and looked up.

The ceiling of the place, if it could be called that, wasn't as far up as he'd expected it to be, nor was it as empty as he had thought. In the center, directly above the growing void in the ground, was the keyhole.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me…" Roxas moaned.

He looked once more all over his surroundings in order to find a way up there, but found none.

"How am I supposed to get up there without falling down into _that_ thing?" he burst out in an exasperated manner.

_Jump._ came the silent, expected answer and Roxas smiled in disbelief.

"OK, so I'm going nuts listening to voices in my head, but there's no fucking way I'm jumping that distance!" he spat out, flailing his arms at the empty space around him.

_Jump._ the voice calmly repeated.

With a deep sigh of resignation, Roxas made an effort to follow the advice at least half way, hoping to get something more creative out of his invisible self-announced advisor.

He took a leap to his right, and was shocked to find himself way further ahead than he'd expected.

"The hell?"

_Upwards. Use the key to hang on. Aim well._

Roxas wrinkled his nose at the thought, but then he shrugged and took a firm, double handed grip on the Oblivion.

"Here it goes…"

He aimed, lowered himself down to collect strength for the push upwards and after a second's hesitation, he took the leap.

The ceiling really was closer than it looked.

The keyblade locked on to the keyhole with a sharp clicking sound and as the world around him started to dematerialize, Roxas shut his eyes hard and hung on to the grip of the keyblade with all his remaining strength.

Sweat was building up in his palms, making the grip slippery and his arms and shoulders were aching from the strain he was putting on them, but Roxas did his best to ignore those details. All he allowed himself to think of was how good it felt to be in the arms of someone who loved him, and that he would feel it once again if he just hung on for a little while longer.

"Axel…"

* * *

><p>The sound was barely a whisper, but everyone inside the small room turned towards it in disbelief and wonder.<p>

Zexion, who was the one standing closest to Roxas'head, gave the others a warning look.

"Don't do a thing," he calmly advised them, mostly directing the words towards the redhead sitting on the floor next to Roxas' feet.

"But, he called for me, damn it…" Axel pressed out through clenched teeth. He'd already turned around and gotten up on his feet, his back against the wall of screens they'd all been watching intently for the last ten minutes.

"You saw the coding, Axel, and you saw what happened. If anyone is even slightly close to breaking his concentration right now, he will be lost to us. Do you understand me?"

Axel's green eyes shifted worriedly from Roxas' unmoving body, to the screens, the will to answer the blonde's call for help apparent in his entire posture.

"Just calm down and do what he says," Xigbar muttered and put a hand on each of Axel's shoulders, pressing him back down on the floor. "Have a little faith in the kid, alright?"

Axel didn't say anything, but his eyes were sparkling with held back frustration as he once more turned them towards the screens.

"Hold on, Rox…" he murmured silently to himself, praying that his words would reach his friend.


	21. 20 The Kingdom Heart

**The Kingdom Heart**

Roxas was losing his grip and his hands were going numb. Underneath him the world was still dissolving into a dark nothingness.

"Help me… Why won't it open?" Roxas asked as he tried to get a better grip on the keyblade.

_Turn it._

"Huh?" Roxas blinked. "How?"

_Turn it. Before the world below takes you. Turn the key!_

Roxas shook his head to get his sweat drenched bangs out of his eyes and figured he had nothing to lose.

Slowly, he started to swing his legs in a circular motion, simultaneously as he did his best to force the keyblade in the same direction by twisting his upper body. It was a trying task, but the turning motion this created was luckily enough to move the blade in the desired direction.

_One more time._

Roxas gritted his teeth and renewed his grip as good as he could and repeated the process.

Finally, a confirming clank was heard and in an instant Roxas found himself standing on solid ground.

He fell to his knees, exhausted to say the least, and dropped the keyblade on the ground with a hollow clatter.

Roxas looked at his hands, the skin red, blistered and torn from the action taken, and felt like never touching the grip of his weapon again.

"I am so _not_ doing _that_ again…" he huffed and put his sore hands on his knees for a moment, palms down against the incredibly enough cool fabric of his coat. He was tired beyond all his limits, but he forced himself to stay awake. He knew he had to stay conscious to survive in this place.

Looking around himself, Roxas suddenly got an urge to gape at the wonder of the place he saw.

The landscape was that of a vast ocean where there were not even the slightest of ripples on the surface, the water calm and clear as a mirror. The water was partly covered by a large seethrough block of what looked like polished crystal, but was hard as rock. In the middle of it all, right in front of Roxas' staring eyes, between the crystal covered ocean and the starry sky, a gigantic heart shaped object of a glowing material hung freely in the air, giving off an ever shifting light of all colors imaginable. The beauty of it was breathtaking and Roxas was stunned, for a long time not being able to form a single comprehensible thought.

_Wake up, Roxas! You have to get us out of here soon, or they'll kill you!_

Roxas instantly snapped out of his state of awe and a line of deep thought formed between his eyebrows.

"Who would kill me, and why? I made it inside, didn't I? There are no more traps, no anti-virus systems, no nothing!"

_You are a danger to the system and all who use it. They will kill you in order to keep the balance. Therefore you'll have to get us out!_

Roxas thought about these words for a moment, before he found out what was odd about them.

"Us? What do you mean by 'get _us'_ out ?"

_ If you get out, I get out. That's what I mean._

Roxas thought he could hear a slight note of annoyance in the voice.

"Who are you?"

Roxas got to his feet, still a bit numb and shaky, picked up the keyblade in the same motion and spun on his heels to look around him for the ownere of the voice that had been haunting him. But just like before, he was proved to be alone, the Kingdom Heart being the only thing, apart from himself, giving off an aura of some kind of life.

"_Where_ are you?" Roxas asked, his voice echoing off the crystal ground.

_ I'm here, too close for you to see me and too far away to be touched._

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

_Look down, into the reflection on the crystal you stand on._

Roxas did as he was told and met with the unexpectedly clear reflection of himself.

"Yeah, it's my reflection, so?"

_Focus on your eyes for a moment, then look at the entire reflection again. _

Roxas wrinkled his forehead in confusion as he didn't see the point in doing this, but never the less, he did it. He looked into the blue eyes of his reflection, until he saw nothing else, then widened his gaze again, and almost fell backwards as he saw another guy staring back at him from behind thick bangs of sand colored hair.

As he looked closer, Roxas realized he recognized the other guy's face.

"Wait a minute… I know you…" he mumbled as he tried to get his mind past the odd feeling of having a reflection that wasn't his own.

_Finally some progress,_ the reflection said and gave him a smirk. _ I'm Sora, and I'm you as well, ever since you got my memories implanted or something. _

"But… how… aren't you supposed to be…"

_Dead?_ Sora finished Roxas' line with a short laugh. _Not quite, I'm afraid. When the plug was pulled I lost connection with my body, both out there and in here, but for some reason my mind was stuck here, inside the reigns of the Kingdom Heart. When you showed up and for some odd reason had parts of me programmed into yourself, I found out I could actually talk to you._

"And you decided to help me get through to the Heart? Why?"

Sora stared at him from underneath the crystal surface.

_Why? I don't know. You're a good guy and you only entered here to save someone else. I guess I like you because you're so much like me. Either way you turn it, I'm a part of you as long as you're logged in like this. _

Roxas looked at the Kingdom Heart for a moment as he tried to gather his thoughts.

"So you're saying that if I ever manage to get out again, you'll be free of this place as well?"

_ Yep. I've gone over the details a couple of times already. I will either seize to exist, or be a part of your coding, whenever you log in on a computer with the VR-linking. Either way I'll be free of this place._

"So that's why you want me to get out of here before they pull my plug as well?"

Sora looked away for a moment, sadness rushing over his face.

_ I've lost so much of what I held dear, and for years I've had nothing to do but pondering over all my mistakes and what I could have done to undo them all. Kairi was killed when she tried to save me from being completely deleted back when Xemnas wired me up to the NAMINÉ. How, I still don't know, but I bet Xemnas was behind it. And Riku… The only time I told him straight out what he meant to me, I also told him to kill me. That's not the best way to end a friendship, you know. _

Roxas had a sudden flash of a memory, where Riku were smiling with disbelief over what Sora had just told him, emotions clashing in his deep turquoise eyes.

"He loved you…" Roxas mumbled silently and Sora nodded.

_ More than I had thought or ever deserved. So, if you can take me away from this never ending place of regret and self tormenting, I'm more than happy to help you._

Roxas gave his precursor's reflection a quick nod of agreement and stood up straight again.

"So, tell me what to do then."

_First off, you should heal yourself or you'll fall asleep or die in the midst of it all…_ Sora pointed out for him and Roxas, feeling a bit stupid for not having thought about this earlier, lifted the keyblade over his head and released the spell.

"That done, what next?" he asked while the green mist still was settling on him.

_The keyhole. You will find it right beneath the Heart._

Roxas looked over at the Kingdom Heart.

"You mean I have to get in underneath that thing?" he asked, a bit doubtful of it all, sounding as if he'd been asked to destroy a sacred ground.

In the reflection beneath him, Sora rolled his eyes at him.

_Come on, you wuss! I've brought you this far, haven't I? Trust me!_

Roxas rolled his shoulders and took a firmer grip on the keyblade before he walked over to the Heart. The closer he got to it though, all his fears and doubts seemed to shrink and fade away as the warmth radiating from the large data based projection seeped into his mind.

_Don't get carried away now, buddy. Don't, and I really mean this, _DON'T EVER_ touch the Heart! The moment you touch it, they will pull your plug, alright? Just get in underneath it._ Sora warned him and gave Roxas a mental image of what it felt like to be disconnected.

Roxas felt like being bitch-slapped back into consciousness and shook his head violently to rid himself of what Sora had showed him, before he continued.

"Thanks for the wakeup-call," he muttered as he got to the spot he'd been directed towards.

_I figured it might give you enough motivation,_ Sora replied with a slight touch of glee in his voice.

"So now what?" Roxas asked restlessly. If he wanted to, he could reach up and easily touch the Heart with his hand, and it was hard to keep in mind that if he did, he would be unplugged. The Heart worked like a magnet on his mind, its content opening up too many possibilities to even think of and its very presence was enough to make anyone feel a desire to just touch it, to see if it felt anything close to what it looked like. "I'm standing dangerously close to this thing, right where you told me to stand. Where's the keyhole?"

_The first is on your left. The second is on my side of the crystal and on your right._

Roxas tried to understand what he meant and wrinkled his forehead.

"There's… there are two of them?" he asked, a bit confused.

_And they have to be simultaneously activated,_ Sora said with a nod.

Roxas eyes grew big with the realization.

"Are you kidding me?" he asked in dismay. "How the hell am I supposed to pull _that_ off?"

Sora rolled his eyes at him. With a movement of his hand, he called forth the Kingdom key and held it pointed at Roxas.

_ You're forgetting about _me_. I'll do the keyhole on my side and you'll get the one on your side. Use the Kingdom key as well. On my mark you lock on target and on the count of three, we both unlock the thing. You'll be out of here before you know it._

Roxas inhaled deeply and let the Oblivion key shift into the smaller keyblade and gave Sora a nod to tell him he was ready to go.

_Do you see the keyhole?_

Looking to his left, Roxas spotted the shimmer of the hole and directed the keyblade towards it.

Sora, on his side, leveled his keyblade with the keyhole on the right.

_Make sure you've got the target locked._

Roxas focused all of his attention on the keyhole in front of him.

"I'm set."

_OK. On my mark: one…_

Roxas thought about what he would do when he woke up in that dark cellar.

_…two…_

He hoped Axel was still OK.

_…three; NOW!_

Both blades connected with their targets and a bright light filled the entirety of Roxas' world for a few seconds.

The next thing he knew, he opened his eyes.


	22. 21 Log out

**Log out**

"What the hell was _that_?" Xigbar, Axel and Zexion burst out in unison as all the coding on the screens was momentarily wiped out, only to return to normal a short moment later. The only difference from before the interruption and after it, was that now they were looking at the first wall of the Kingdom Heart Defense system again.

Axel turned with fear in his heart to see if Roxas was still breathing and met with the blonde's confused clear blue eyes.

"Axel? What… what have I missed?" Roxas croaked out with a dry throat as he took in the other people populating the room.

Axel hurried forward, unwired Roxas from the chair, in which he'd been imprisoned for the last number of hours, and as soon as all the cords and sensors were off of him Axel closed his arms around him, holding him tightly.

"It's all OK now, Rox. Ansem's been taken care of by Lexaeus, and Marluxia has been dealed with in the same manner," Axel said in a try to sum up the events.

Zexion, his dislocated arm put back in its socket and placed in a mitella by the help of Xigbar some minutes earlier, came forward with a curious expression.

"I don't know how you did it, but somehow you managed to reboot the entire Kingdom Heart defense on your way out. There's not a single trace of you ever getting inside…"

Roxas managed a smile over Axel's shoulder.

"Don't thank me. I only did half the job."

Zexion raised his eyebrows a bit further.

"Oh, really?"

Now Xigbar was standing beside the librarian as well.

"Does this have something to do with your code key splitting into two back there in the end of it?" the black haired man asked before Zexion had a chance to say anything more.

Roxas thought about it for a moment. The way things must have looked to the ones looking on the actions from this side of the screens, he guessed that was what had happened. The key had split in two as he and Sora both operated it to unlock the door out.

"Yes, you could say that. Sora helped me most of the way."

Both Zexion and Xigbar looked dumbfounded and Axel pulled away from Roxas just enough for him to be able to look him in the eyes.

"Sora? You mean his memories?"

"Partly. His mind was sort of stuck in the coding of the Kingdom Heart defense, and connected with me, which made it possible for him to help me find the way out."

The others looked like a group of question marks and Roxas decided to go over the details another time, when he felt more rested and up to the task.

"I'll explain it more thoroughly later on," he said and looked at Axel with a smile on his lips. "Right now I need to rest. I'm tired to the bones!"

Axel smiled back, his emerald eyes glittering with warmth.

"Do you think you can walk, or should I help you?"


	23. Epilogue

_And so comes the ending of this tale. I hope you've enjoyed it all the way and that this little final ending scene will be equally enjoyable. This story has been one of my "babies" through the years of writing fanfics and i really grew to love it already after the first three chapters. Please let me know your thoughts of it all in a review. ^^ / Silverspegel_

* * *

><p><strong>Epilogue <strong>

Roxas sat himself down in front of the computers, his mind set.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

Axel stood behind him, letting one of his hands toy with the spikes of his blond hair.

"I have to check if he was right. It'll be alright to do it now. I'm well rested and I won't do any hacking, just take a stroll and chat. It's perfectly safe," Roxas said with a chuckle and strapped on the portable VR equipment to his arms, legs and neck.

"First thing you do if you bump into trouble?" Axel asked and flicked on the power to the computer, then connected the cables between the VR-tools and the hard drive.

"I'll run the log off scripts and get straight back here to you," Roxas laughed and gave him a slight peck on the nose as he bent forward to put the armrest keys in position.

"Off you go then. I'll be waiting."

Roxas leaned back and closed his eyes, placed his hands on the armrests, his fingers at the ready on the keys.

"See you in an hour or so," he said calmly.

He felt Axel's presence as he leaned in over him and for a short moment their lips met in a warm kiss, before the redhead slowly pulled away, leaving a bit of his warmth on Roxas' lips.

"Now I _know_ you'll want to come back quickly," he said and Roxas could hear the smile in his voice. He then heard a switch being flicked and suddenly he was standing in an open field of green grass.

Roxas looked around himself to make a mental map of his surroundings and closed his eyes to wait in stillness.

Five heartbeats later, he felt a tap on his shoulder.

"Are you standing here sleeping? Geez, and here I took you for a serious guy!"

Roxas smiled and opened his eyes, meeting a pair just as blue as the sky above them.

"I was starting to think you'd never show up, Sora," Roxas said and took the other's hand in greeting.

Sora smiled.

"Me? I'll never disappear completely, you know. You're stuck with me from now on!"

Laughing, the two young keybearers started to walk across the field, finally finding peace, as the two parts of their shared minds were once more made into a whole.

- The end-


End file.
